Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

MESSAGES FROM THE QUEEN

WESTERN SAMOA (GIFT OF A MACE)

The Vice-Chamberlain of the Household: reported Her Majesty's Answer to the Address as follows:
I have received your Address praying that I will give directions that there be presented on behalf of your House a gift of a Mace to the Legislative Assembly of the Independent State of Western Samoa and assuring me that your House will make good the expenses attending the same.
It gave me the greatest pleasure to learn that your House desires to make such a presentation and I will gladly give directions for carrying your proposal into effect.

DOUBLE TAXATION RELIEF

The Vice-Chamberlain of the Household: reported Her Majesty's Answer to the Address as follows:
I have received your Addresses praying that the Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income) (British Solomon Islands Protectorate) Order 1974, the Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income) (Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony) Order 1974, the Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income) (Seychelles) Order 1974 and the Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income) (Air Transport Undertakings and their Employees) (Soviet Union) Order 1974 be made in the form of the drafts laid before your House.
I will comply with your request.

PRIVATE BUSINESS

BRITISH TRANSPORT DOCKS BILL

Lords amendments considered and agreed to.

BRITISH RAILWAYS BILL

Order for Third Reading read.

To be read the Third time upon Monday next.

LERWICK HARBOUR ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL

Read the Third time and passed.

STANDING ORDERS (PRIVATE BUSINESS)

The Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr. George Thomas): I beg to move,
That the several Amendments to Standing Orders relating to Private Business hereinafter stated in the Schedule be made:—

Standing Order 1:

To leave out line 7 and insert "the term 'community' means a community for the purposes of the Local Government Act 1972".

In line 9, leave out "administrative county" and insert "metropolitan county or non metropolitan county".

To leave out lines 10 and 11 and insert "the term 'district ' in relation to England means metropolitan district or non-metropolitan district".

To leave out line 28.

In line 30, leave out "rural" in both places.

In line 31, leave out "rural".

In line 32, at end insert "and the council of a community or group of communities or the community meeting of a community which has no separate community council".

In line 47, at end insert "the term 'parish' means a parish for the purposes of the Local Government Act 1972".

In line 62, at end insert "the term ' water authority' means an authority established in accordance with section 1 of the Water Act 1973, that is to say, a regional water authority or the Welsh National Water Development Authority".

In line 68, at end insert "Where the Standing Orders require anything to be deposited with, or delivered or sent to, the proper officer of a local authority, that requirement shall be satisfied by depositing it with or delivering or sending it to, the chief executive of the authority for transmission (where the chief executive is not the proper officer) to that officer".

Standing Order 4A:

In line 7, after "meeting" insert "or community council or community meeting".

In line 10, after "meeting" insert "or community council or community meeting". Leave out "rural".

In line 11, after "parish" insert "or community".

In line 13, leave out "county borough".

In line 19, leave out "and county boroughs".

In line 25, leave out "rural".

In line 27, after first "parish" insert "or community".

In line 27, at end insert "or community"

In line 31, leave out "or county borough".

In line 34, leave out "or county borough".

Standing Order 5:

In line 5, leave out "boroughs, and urban and rural".

In line 6, leave out "(in the case of rural districts) the".

In line 6, at end insert "or communities".

In line 28, leave out "borough, or urban or rural".

In line 29, leave out "(in the case of a rural district) the".

In line 29, after "parish" insert or community".

In line 33, leave out "as if it were a borough" and insert "and a London borough as if they were districts".

Standing Order 6:

In line 8, leave out "borough, or urban or rural".

In line 8, leave out "(in the cast of a rural district) the".

In line 9, after "parish" insert "or community".

In line 13, leave out "as if it were a borough "and insert "and a London borough as if they were districts".

Standing Order 10:

In line 12, leave out "county borough".

In line 20, leave out "and county boroughs".

In line 29, leave out "or county borough".

In line 33, leave out "or county borough".

Standing Order 16:

In line 18, leave out "borough, urban or rural".

In line 19, after first "district "insert "or London borough".

In line 19, leave out "(in the case of a rural district) the".

In line 19, at end insert "or community".

In line 22, leave out first "Clerks" and insert "proper officers".

In line 22, leave out "and town clerks of county boroughs".

In line 23, leave out "with the Clerk".

Standing Order 22:

In line 10, after "the"insert" proper officer".

In line 25, after "parish" insert "or community".

In line 25, leave out "clerk" and insert "proper officer".

In line 28, leave out "clerk" and insert "proper officer".

In line 30, after "parish" insert "or community".

In line 31, leave out "clerk" and insert "proper officer".

Standing Order 25:

In line 20, leave out "county borough".

In line 21, leave out "county".

Standing Order 27:

In line 11, leave out "clerk" and insert "proper officer".

In line 12, leave out "and the town clerk of each county borough".

In line 20, leave out "clerk" and insert "proper officer".

In line 21, leave out "and with the town clerk of each county borough".

In line 24, leave out "or county borough (as the case may be)".

In line 44, leave out "clerk" and insert "proper officer".

In line 45, leave out "or town clerk (as the case may be)".

In line 47, leave out first "clerk" and insert "proper officer or chief executive".

In line 47, leave out "and the town clerk of each county borough".

In line 55, leave out "clerk" and insert "proper officer or chief executive".

In line 80, leave out from "county" to the end of line 81.

Standing Order 30:

In line 5, leave out "and Industry".

Standing Order 31:

In line 6, leave out "and Industry".

Standing Order 32:

In line 11, leave out "river" and insert "water".

Standing Order 33:

In line 5, leave out "river" and insert "water".

Standing Order 36:

In line 11, leave out "or non-county".

In line 12, leave out "town clerk of such" and insert "proper officer of the".

In line 13, leave out "urban or rural".

In line 13, leave out "clerk" and insert "proper officer".

In line 15, after "council" insert "or community having a community council".

In line 15, leave out "Clerk" and insert "proper officer".

In line 16, after "parish" insert "or community".

In line 16, leave out "clerk" and insert "such officer".

In line 18, leave out "comprised in a rural district, and "and insert "or community".

In line 19, after first "parish" insert "or community".

In line 19, at end insert "or community".

Standing Order 39:

In line 5, after "Environment" insert "and at the Home Office".

In lines 6 and 7, leave out "and at the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications".

In line 9, leave out "and industry, the Home Office".

Standing Order 42:

In line 4, leave out "river" and insert "water".

Standing Order 43:

In line 7, leave out "river" and insert "water".

Standing Order 44:

In line 14, leave out "clerk" and insert "proper officer".

In line 19, leave out from "meeting" to the end of line 20 and insert "or a community council or a community meeting".

Standing Order 46:

In line 4, leave out "and industry".

In line 13, leave out "borough or urban or rural".

In line 14, after "district" insert "or London borough".

In line 22, leave out "local".

In line 24, leave out "in the case of a rural district".

Standing Order 47:

In line 28, leave out "boroughs, urban".

In line 28, leave out "rural parishes in England and Wales" and insert "London boroughs".

Standing Order 61:

In line 14, leave out "clerk" and insert "proper officer".

In line 15, leave out "and the town clerk of every county borough".

In line 29, leave out "or county borough".

In line 45, leave out from "county to the end of line 46.

Standing Order 62:

In line 12, leave out "county borough".

Standing Order 65:

In line 24, leave out "county borough".

Standing Order 97:

In line 2, leave out "borough or urban or rural".

In line 2, after "district" insert "or London borough".

In line 3, leave out "or the borough or district" and insert "or the district or borough".

Standing Order 98:

In line 7, leave out "county road, or along any other".

In line 12, leave out from the first "county" to the end of line 13.

Standing Order 136A:

In line 3, leave out "county".

In line 4, leave out second "county".

In line 7, leave out "county".

In line 11, leave out "county".

In line 14, leave out "county".

In line 21, leave out "clerk" and insert "proper officer".

In line 26, leave out "county".

Standing Order 155:

In line 4, leave out "and Industry".

Standing Order 159:

In line 2, leave out "or any municipal borough".

Appendix A:

In line 25, leave out "Clerk, or other".

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions — NORTHERN IRELAND

Nursery Education

Mr. Beith: asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what discussions he has had with the Roman Catholic authorities about the possibility of introducing non-sectarian nursery education to replace segregated education; and whether he will make a statement.

The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr. Roland Moyle): I have not yet seen any of the Church authorities on matters concerning education. I am making arrangements to do so.

Mr. Beith: I am grateful for the Minister's reply. Is he aware that priority should be given to the development of nursery education in Northern Ireland and that in the long term it is to be hoped that there will be discussions leading to the reduction of the disadvantages resulting from the division of education between the two communities?

Mr. Moyle: A programme of nursery education was agreed by the Executive in Northern Ireland before it was dissolved, and many people in the Province have shown an interest in moving away from


segregated education. But obviously it is a matter that I shall have to discuss with people before I make up my mind.

Mr. McNamara: Is my hon. Friend aware that there is a great deal of support for the idea that nursery education particularly should be non-segregated? In rural areas especially there is a great deal to be gained by a non-duplication of public expenditure, even if it is looked at only in these terms and not in terms of the positive contribution that it could make to community welfare?

Mr. Moyle: I am aware that a number of people in the Province support the idea of non-segregated nursery education. But the possibility of introducing it may be exaggerated, because in many areas of the Province the various community groups live in their own communities. That tendency has been accentuated over the past five years or so. Therefore, the number of areas in which non-segregated nursery schools could be established, bearing in mind that obviously the pupils live in close proximity to the schools, is rather more limited than some people believe.

Mr. Kilfedder: In any discussions that the hon. Gentleman may have with the Roman Catholic authorities, will he emphasise that the controlled schools are legally non-sectarian and could easily be made so in practice if the Roman Catholics relaxed the ban on parents sending their children to these nursery schools? Will the hon. Gentleman bear in mind the efforts made in my own constituency of North Down by many leading Roman Catholics who are trying to persuade their Church to do this?

Mr. Moyle: Obviously all facets of the problem will be considered when I meet Roman Catholic and other Church authorities.

Policing

Mr. Hooley: asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will initiate discussions on possible arrangements for Commonwealth forces to share in the policing of Northern Ireland.

The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr. Stanley Orme): I do not think assistance from Commonwealth forces would be appropriate or practicable.

Mr. Hooley: Is my right hon. Friend aware that I support the Government White Paper on Northern Ireland and regard the Convention as a very important step forward, which I believe will succeed? But does he think that some reinforcement measures are needed? One useful measure would be to play down the British Army's rôle as a policing force and to try to introduce a body which, in its composition, would be manifestly more neutral in the affairs of Northern Ireland.

Mr. Orme: I can tell my hon. Friend that the Government are reassessing the rôle of the Army regarding policing. A statement was made yesterday and my right hon. Friend will be developing this matter in answer to further Questions.

Mr. Ian Gilmour: Will the right hon. Gentleman repudiate the implication in the supplementary question of the hon. Member for Sheffield, Healey (Mr. Hooley) that the British Army is not neutral as between the two communities?

Mr. Orme: I do not think that my hon. Friend was implying that. I think that he was trying to assist by suggesting, as he has done on previous occasions, that troops of either the United Nations or the Commonwealth could assist. In the Government's opinion it is not believed that they would assist. We recognise that the Army has had a difficult job in policing. It is not the Army's rôle, and that is why the Government are now re-examining the matter.

Mr. Fitt: Does my right hon. Friend agree that in the final analysis the only answer to this difficult problem is to be found in the bringing into existence of a police service composed of Northern Ireland people who will be freely and readily accepted by both communities? Will he take urgent steps to involve the representatives of both communities with the idea of bringing such a service into operation as quickly as possible?

Mr. Orme: I welcome my hon. Friend's statement and the manner in which he has put it to the House. It is at the basis of the proposals that my right hon. Friend wishes to discuss with all sections of the community following today's Questions and his statement.

Mr. Molyneaux: asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what


representation he has had about the creation of a Home Guard; and if he has considered its formation within the structure of the UDR and the RUC Reserve.

The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. Merlyn Rees): Various proposals have been put to me and I am examining how best to make use of local willingness to support the RUC and to make a contribution towards policing throughout Northern Ireland. I have no plans for the creation of a Home Guard.

Mr. Molyneaux: Will the right hon. Gentleman accept that in order to facilitate the eventual phasing out of the Army from Northern Ireland it would be preferable if such a force were created within a reorganised RUC Reserve? Will he give an assurance that if and when it comes to the creation of such a force it will not be recruited and organised on a sectarian basis?

Mr. Rees: I can assure the hon. Gentleman that I am not seeking sectarian policing. I am discussing the matter which he raises with the security forces and I have had discussions with members of political parties, and it is my intention to continue with those discussions. But at the appropriate moment—I hope it is not long delayed—we shall come forward with proposals as a result of discussions with the community as a whole. Such discussions are necessary because the proposals would have to be accepted by the whole community. We shall find a way in which the community can play its part in policing in Northern Ireland under the control of the RUC.

Mr. Fitt: Does my right hon. Friend agree that those people in Northern Ireland who seem to be advocating the creation of a Home Guard are advocating the return of a force such as the former discredited B Specials? Does he further agree that, given the experience which the House has had with that force, the Government must not tolerate the bringing back into existence of that type of force?

Mr. Rees: There is no intention of bringing back the B Specials. Those people in Northern Ireland who, for good reasons, are asking for the end of detention and of the emergency provisions, and for the withdrawal of the Army to

barracks, will, I hope, realise that that could create a vacuum. Such people would have to be prepared to play their part in policing, because that vacuum would be a recipe for sectarian murders.

Mr. Kershaw: Will the right hon. Gentleman free himself from any political bias in this matter—I am not suggesting that he is biased, but pressures are put on him in different ways—and agree that it is essential that if security is to be safeguarded there should be a local force with people from the local community rather than visiting troops? Does he not agree that this is a technical rather than a political matter?

Mr. Rees: With regard to political bias, I find it difficult when asked to be non-political. I thought that we were in this House because we were political. I look at this matter in as objective a way as I can. My aim is to withdraw the Army from the streets of Northern Ireland. The Army, having been given a job to do, has done it under impossible conditions. But we can withdraw the Army only when everybody—both main communities—are co-operating.

Long Kesh

Mr. Dalyell: asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many detainees he has released from Long Kesh since Tuesday 9th July.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: Since 9th July 1974, I have released 14 detainees from Her Majesty's Prison, the Maze. In the same period 18 were released by the commissioners.

Mr. Dalyell: Why so few?

Mr. Rees: There are a number of factors to take into account. Government policy is to release detainees in accordance with the security position. I say to my hon. Friend that if, this week, the flight of an aeroplane with over 80 people in it had led to that number of deaths, it would have made it extremely difficult to continue with the present policy. There will be further releases. When we consider the number of releases involved in a fortnight it will be seen that it would not be long, on an arithmetical basis and if there were a ceasefire, before the Maze could be emptied. Of course, it is not a one-way process.

Mr. Molyneaux: Will the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that he will investigate the serious allegations made about the ill-treatment of prisoners last weekend in Long Kesh?

Mr. Rees: I am glad to see the hon. Gentleman in the Chamber, because he was in the aeroplane which, the other morning, might well have blown up. I gave authority on Friday evening, as a result of Protestant remand prisoners and others reallocating themselves in the Maze, for the governor to offer to consider their complaints. It was many hours later that the Army, which had no rôle other than to be asked in, entered the Maze. Prisoners were hurt and soldiers were hurt. The whole matter is being investigated by the RUC.

Mr. Thorne: Is my right hon. Friend prepared to tell us how many additional people have been interned since the same date? In view of the growing awareness of the position in Northern Ireland and in Southern Ireland will he say whether the whole problem of internment is closely related to the violence and other factors in Northern Ireland? Is he prepared yet again to scrutinise the Government's policy and to end internment within the next few days?

Mr. Rees: I could not advise the policy of turning 600 people out on to the streets in the next few days. I believe that the result would be bloodshed in Northern Ireland. It is easier said than done. However, I want to end detention without trial. In the period to which my hon. Friend refers I have signed ICOs for two people. They were not signed for political reasons but because of acts that they had committed. If those acts were to cease and killing and shooting were to end, the job of ending detention without trial or with some sort of trial would be very much quicker.

Mr. Carson: Will the right hon. Gentleman give us a breakdown from 9th July of the number of IRA members and the number of Loyalists who have been released from Long Kesh?

Mr. Rees: No, I could not do so without notice. When we consider the proportions in Long Kesh it will be seen that I have released people from both communities.

Detainees (Re-arrests)

Mr. Mather: asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many former internees in Northern Ireland have been rearrested for suspected acts of terrorism.

Mr. Orme: It would take a disproportionate amount of effort to determine the total number of former internees and detainees who have been rearrested for suspected acts of terrorism.

Mr. Mather: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that figures have been made available in the past? I am surprised that he is not able to produce figures. Is the Minister saying that the answer was wrong?

Mr. Merlyn Rees: No. The hon. Gentleman is asking the wrong question.

Mr. Speaker: Order. We cannot have this dialogue. Let the hon. Member for Esher (Mr. Mather) ask his supplementary question.

Mr. Mather: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the number of former internees who have been released who have returned to terrorism and are now wanted for terrorist offences but have not yet been arrested? Will he bear uppermost in his mind, when releasing further internees, the security of our forces in Northern Ireland and their point of view?

Mr. Orme: It would not be proper to disclose a person's previous convictions, or the fact that he had been detained, before his trial. Internment or detention is not a previous conviction and it does not appear in the court records even after trial.

Mr. Dalyell: What do the Government think of the proposals emanating from such different sources as Frank McManus and Gusby Spence that the balance of risk should allow many more prisoners to be allowed out of Long Kesh and that if they were picked up again there should be severe sentences?

Mr. Orme: The Government want to see the end of detention without trial, but we cannot play about with the issue. If the Government end detention without trial, that system must end. We cannot have another standard, or we shall


once more restart the issue. That is why the Government want to work towards ending detention without trial in its entirety.

Mr. Ian Gilmour: Will the right hon. Gentleman elucidate his original answer? Surely it is possible to know the people who have been interned since 1971. There must be a list of them. Surely it is equally possible to know the people who have been arrested for suspected acts of terrorism since then. By correlating the two lists it must be perfectly easy to get a correct answer.

Mr. Orme: It is not easy, because the security forces do not keep figures on a Province-wide basis for all former internees and detainees who are rearrested because of their suspected reinvolvement in terrorism. Such a statistic would be provided only after a thorough examination of the daily charge sheets for the last three years.

Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles: I realise that Ministers have to make some difficult decisions, but does the right hon. Gentleman understand how depressing it is for the security forces when people whom they have picked up are released and then return to terrorist activities? Has he in operation any system of parole by which people who have been released in rather doubtful cases can be required to report to the police daily? They could be picked up again quickly if they did not report before they returned to terrorist activities.

Mr. Orme: On the first point, there is a later Question on the Order Paper, and I would ask the hon. and gallant Gentleman to await that.
There is parole for detainees over which the Government and the Secretary of State have jurisdiction. The issue of parole generally is being considered by the Government. Having people report on that kind of basis following the ending of detention would be completely impracticable.

Captain Orr: I appreciate the possible difficulty of giving previous figures, but surely it is very much in the public interest that figures should be kept from now on, because plainly it must be of value to the public to know what the situation is to enable them to evaluate the necessity for releases from detention.

Will the right hon. Gentleman, in a limited sense, tell us how many people who have formerly been detained and released have since been charged with offences?

Mr. Orme: There is a later Question on both those points. On the general thesis of the hon. and gallant Gentleman's supplementary question, it would be extremely difficult to compile the figures to which he refers. There is also the principle of British justice. If a person is arrested it does not mean that he is guilty. He is liable to be charged. The fact of release or previous convictions is not disclosed until after conviction. Records are not kept of internment, because it is not a criminal charge.

Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles: asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, of the 65 detainees released shortly before Christmas 1973, how many have subsequently been picked up and re-interned for terrorist activities.

Mr. Orme: Of these 65 detainees, 10 have been rearrested and made the subject of interim custody orders.

Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that answer. Will he now deal with the question about the reaction to these figures among the security forces?

Mr. Orme: So far as we understand, the security forces were notified of pending releases before they were made last December. It is regrettable that some people have returned to violence, but a large proportion have not. The percentage in many ways is much better than one would get in normal prison statistics.

Mr. Dalyell: Following the recent disturbances inside Long Kesh, what is now the policy towards different parties talking with one another inside the camp?

Mr. Orme: My hon. Friend was there at the time of the disturbances and we were under pressure from him because the Provisionals wanted to talk to the Loyalists. Unfortunately, the recent disturbances were between Loyalists—the UDA and the UVF.

Mr. van Straubenzee: Of those releases, were there any numbers additional to those which have been given who were charged before the courts? Is the Minister satisfied that a figure of 10 out of 65


should do other than make him anxious about substantial further releases of detainees, remembering that this is the other side of the coin upon which we ask the Army to work within the law?

Mr. Orme: I do not want to make debating capital, but the hon. Member was one of the Ministers involved at the time. Two or three of these people have actually been brought before the courts, as opposed to being re-detained.

Curfew

Mr. Wall: asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will take steps to impose a curfew in the border area.

Mr. Moyle: No, Sir. The advantages of a curfew are limited, and in the opinion of the security authorities are judged to be outweighed by the disadvantages. However, the possibility is kept under constant review.

Mr. Wall: Is the Minister aware that many people consider that the border is far too open? If he will not introduce authorised crossing places or identity cards, will he consider keeping under review the possibility of a night curfew to restrict movement across the border at night?

Mr. Moyle: The consideration here is the commitment of forces required to enforce the suggestion, plus the fact that at any given moment the persons using the border crossings are overwhelmingly innocent parties, using them for innocent purposes. As a result, this might have a counter-productive effect.

Royal Ulster Constabulary

Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson: asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on the latest position regarding recruiting for the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the Royal Ulster Constabulary Reserve.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: Since 1st January 1971 the strength of the regular force has risen from 3,809 to 4,450 and the RUC Reserve from 578 to 2,558. During the first six months of 1974 there has been a net increase in strength of 59 in the RUC and 44 in the RUC Reserve. The Police Authority and the Chief Constable are giving priority to a vigorous recruiting campaign.

Mr. McNair-Wilson: These figures are welcome for what they are. Is it not clear that there is still a large amount of untapped voluntary assistance available in Northern Ireland? I welcome the statement that I read in The Times today, that the Secretary of State is considering some form of auxiliary-based force. Does the right hon. Gentleman intend that it should be what I might describe as a neighbourhood-based force and that it should be equipped as effectively as is required to meet whatever security problem it may have to cope with?

Mr. Rees: The hon. Gentleman's supplementary question goes beyond the regular forces. Regular forces are basically important if proper policing is to return to the Province, and I am certainly investigating the question of the community as a whole playing a part in the policing of the Province. A number of ideas have been put to me. Indeed, I discussed this matter with people in the street in Londonderry the day before yesterday. One thing is absolutely sure—that to add to the number of people with guns in an unco-ordinated way in Northern Ireland, given the sectarian feelings there, would cause even more trouble to the RUC. Anything that is done must be under the control of the RUC and acceptable to the community as a whole.

Mr. Evelyn King: I am not disputing the Secretary of State's last sentence, but does he accept that the figures are disappointingly small? This question has been raised many times. We have heard talk about a recruiting campaign. Will the right hon. Gentleman give us some details about it? How much expenditure is involved? Is it a national campaign? Will he put his heart into this matter?

Mr. Rees: I have not got the precise figures, but if the hon. Gentleman were living in Northern Ireland he could hardly open a newspaper or watch television without seeing and hearing invitations to join the RUC. The figures, relative to a population of 1½ million people, are very high. The point is that there are unusual circumstances in Northern Ireland. That is why we must look wider, bearing in mind the problems involved for the community as a whole, to help in this situation. I profoundly believe that peace, or


dealing with violence, in the Province cannot be achieved or dealt with, first, by an Army from outside and, secondly, by the police. Until the community as a whole are involved we shall not achieve success.

Mr. Carson: asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he would indicate those areas of Belfast where the RUC do not provide a comprehensive police service.

Mr. Orme: Police services are carried out in all areas of Belfast but some functions in the Markets area, the Ardoyne, Unity Flats, the New Lodge area and other parts of West Belfast require Army support.

Mr. Carson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that people in my constituency especially in the New Lodge Road area, want to know why they have not seen a policeman in their areas for the past four years? Is he aware that the police are forbidden to go in there except under an Army escort—and that is called a "no-stop" patrol? Is he also aware that the UDR, when stationed at Girdwood, has to slip out through the back door and do a two-mile detour to avoid a certain part of the Antrim Road?
Will the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance to my constituents, particularly those in the New Lodge Road area, that he will at least try to put in a police force, perhaps supported by security forces, and let the police be seen in that area?

Mr. Orme: This is tied up with my right hon. Friend's previous answer about improving policing in Northern Ireland, not least on both sides of the divide as it exists. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman would wish to denigrate in any way the RUC, which operates in the areas he has mentioned in a very courageous manner. It is the Government's intention to see that policing is extended by unarmed police, in future operating throughout Belfast. When this is achieved we shall be moving towards a proper solution in Northern Ireland.

Constitutional Convention

Mr. Michael Latham: asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland whether he will make a further statement on the criteria which will permit persons or organisations to put forward candidates

for the election to the proposed convention.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: Candidates will be able to stand for election to the Constitutional Convention on the same basis as for the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Mr. Latham: Will the Secretary of State give a firm assurance to the House that former terrorists will not be allowed to stand for election to the proposed Convention unless they have expressly renounced the use of violence?

Mr. Rees: I cannot give that assurance because, given the nature of Northern Ireland, I do not think that it would be forthcoming. People who engage in terrorism and who stand for the Assembly will still be able to be dealt with by the criminal law or in any other way, as is true of anybody else, but there are former terrorists who have served prison sentences or otherwise who are no longer involved in violence. I think that to try to get oaths or anything of that kind from people who have decided on political action would be the wrong approach.

Mr. Fitt: Is my right hon. Friend aware that among the internees now incarcerated in Long Kesh are many who would be prepared to put their names forward as candidates in any forthcoming election to the constituent assembly? As no evidence has been brought before a court of law—earlier my right hon. Friend the Minister of State referred to British justice—those people should be entitled to stand as candidates. They cannot be included in the category of terrorists, as no evidence has been brought before the courts to prove that they are terrorists.

Mr. Rees: My hon. Friend knows that this is the case not only with detainees, but with convicted prisoners in Northern Ireland. The rules for Northern Ireland are different from those for the rest of the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, there is nothing to prevent their standing for election. In terms of the ICOs that I have signed, which have eventually gone through the commissioners, my hon. Friend is really saying that I know that some people on both sides of the divide—a number of cases come to mind straight away—have been involved in the most incredible killing. For a man to say, "I want to be a politician", so that he gets out of the Maze, would be wrong.


A man cannot be a politician at one moment and a killer at another. It is important for people to decide whether they want to be politicians and, if they are not elected, to lump it and not return to violence.

Mr. Beith: Does the Secretary of State agree that those who have eventually renounced violence, after having been interned by the British Government, represent an honourable roll, of whom hon. President Makarios is one?

Mr. Rees: I am sure that we could find a wider variety. But, in terms of the internment of someone like Archbishop Makarios, who has eventually become a leading politician, the nature of detention in Northern Ireland has been rather different when I think of the people for whom I have signed ICOs.

Border Roads (Closure)

Mr. McCusker: asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement regarding the policy of the security forces on the closing of border roads.

Mr. Moyle: I would refer the hon. Member to the reply given on 16th May to Questions from the hon. Member for Esher (Mr. Mather) and the right hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. West). Since then, six more unapproved border crossings have been closed, making a total of 37 since September 1973.—[Vol. 873, cc. 1433–5.]

Mr. McCusker: Is the Minister aware that there are approximately 80 frontier crossings along the South Armagh border, of which the majority are unapproved and, therefore, should not be used by regular traffic? What is the status of the Flagstaff Road between Newry and Omeath, which was closed at great expense both in time and manpower by the Army because it was obviously considered a big security risk? That being the case, will the hon. Gentleman assure us that he will not take any cognisance of representations made to him by citizens of the Irish Republic to keep unapproved border roads open into an area where more than 40 British soldiers have been killed?

Mr. Moyle: The question of keeping roads across the border open or closing

them is one for recommendation by the security forces. With regard to the Flagstaff Road closure, this is an unapproved crossing. It was closed at the end of June because it was known as a route for terrorists. It is now being reopened, following agreement between us and the Irish Republic security forces. The Republic's security forces will mount a permanent vehicle checkpoint on their side of the border.

Murders

Mr. West: asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many murders committed in Northern Ireland since March 1972 can be classified as sectarian; on what evidence such classification is made; how many convictions were obtained or detention orders made in respect of such murders; and how many of the convicted or detained are known to be Protestants.

Mr. Orme: It is not possible to attribute motives with certainty in each case, and records are not classified in this way. The detailed information sought is, therefore, not available, but the RUC has reason to believe that since 1972 about 250 murders have been sectarian in motive, of which approximately 170 victims were Catholic and 80 victims Protestant.

Mr. West: Does the right hon. Gentleman recall the statement made on 3rd June by the Secretary of State and recorded in the OFFICIAL REPORT? I shall quote the relevant paragraph—[Interruption.] Apparently that is not in order. May I therefore ask the right hon. Gentleman if he recalls the Secretary of State's stating that of the 250 murders committed the overwhelming proportion were committed by Protestants? Can the right hon. Gentleman's right hon. Friend substantiate that serious slander made on the Protestant community of Northern Ireland and, if he cannot, will he withdraw the statement?

Mr. Orme: I would have thought that the figures which I have given, which have been provided by the RUC, substantiate the very point which my right hon. Friend made in the earlier debate. This is an extremely serious matter, and sectarian murders form one of the worst aspects of violence in Northern Ireland. We want to see them ended.
There is no doubt that a predominant number of the murders committed were against Roman Catholics. That is not to say that murders against Roman Catholics have been committed by Protestants—and that was not said in the debate. Nevertheless, it looks very much as if it is a fact, and the information of the security forces confirms that.

Sir John Rodgers: I may have misheard the Minister of State, but I did not hear him answer one particular point, namely, how many convictions have been obtained or detention orders made in respect of such murders, and how many people among these murderers have been detected and detained?

Mr. Orme: That is a difficult question to answer. When people go before the courts accused of murder it is exceedingly difficult to establish whether the murder was a sectarian murder. Our figures show that 19 persons have so far been convicted and that a further 20 are awaiting trial. This is over a recent period. But, for reasons that I have already stated, it is impossible to categorise all these figures. I hope that the hon. Gentleman understands the difficulty in this matter.

International Guerrilla Festival

Mr. Craig: asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what action he proposes to take should the conference of terrorists described as an anti-imperialist festival meet in Belfast or any part of Northern Ireland.

Mr. Rees: The Official Sinn Fein Festival which is at present taking place in Dublin is expected in Belfast next week to continue in a programme of political discussions, lectures and films. Provided that the activities of the participants remain within the law no action will be taken against them. Any who transgress the law will be dealt with accordingly.

Mr. Craig: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that his answer will cause considerable disappointment to those who have experienced bombs not only in Belfast but in Birmingham and London? While this conference may be regarded as nothing more than a supporters' club, nevertheless, in the present climate, it seems wrong that such a conference should be acceptable in war-torn Belfast.

Mr. Rees: A number of people have been turned back at the ports here, and I understand that a number have been turned back in Dublin. In view of what I have said in the House, I was interested to read in the paper something that was said in Dublin. It seems that the Official Sinn Fein leader in Dublin yesterday talked about the Provisional IRA's
mindless bombing campaign and obsession with militarism".
If there are people who want to talk together, however much we may disapprove of their views, if they do so in a non-violent way, that should be allowed, but if it leads to any problems, I have the power to deal with it. My advice to the House would be not to believe the descriptions in the Press and not to give free publicity to this meeting. That is what is happening. I am satisfied with the powers I have.

Mr. Fitt: Does the Secretary of State recall that when the right hon. Member for Belfast, East (Mr. Craig) was, unfortunately, Minister of Home Affairs in the old Stormont Parliament, he had an absolute obsession with banning legal political organisations? It was due to the imposition of those bans over so many years that we had discontent in Northern Ireland and eventually the tragedy with which we have had to live for five years.

Mr. Rees: I am not unaware of the history of recent years or—the longer I am there—of further back. As to what I have said about this conference—that people should be allowed to talk and air views with which others may not agree—if there is any sign that there may be sectarian military opposition which will cause problems to the forces there, I have powers to deal with that.

Countryside Improvement Scheme

Mr. Kilfedder: asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many persons have been provided with employment since the inception of the Countryside Improvement Scheme.

Mr. Moyle: 5,644 jobs have been provided between 1st January 1971 when the scheme was started, and 31st March 1974.

Mr. Kilfedder: Is the hon. Gentleman satisfied that there are sufficient safeguards to ensure that this worthy scheme 

is not manipulated to large estate owners simply as a means of improving their own property at the taxpayer's expense? Will he hold a full investigation to find out how many landlords are employing people under this scheme—at only £3 per person per week—who formerly worked for them and continue to do the same work on their estates?

Mr. Moyle: I have seen the case that the hon. Gentleman raised with the Department of Agriculture. There is no evidence that the farmer involved made any claim on the scheme as a result of the facts that the hon. Gentleman brought to light. Given that there is a double check, in that the Department of Manpower and the Department of Agriculture are both involved, and that there is an initial inspection and a subsequent procedure for applying, the safeguards are considered adequate by the Department of Agriculture. Had the farmer that he has in mind used the procedure. I am sure that any disqualifying circumstances would have come to light.

Oral Answers to Questions — SCOTLAND

Mr. Ancram: asked the Prime Minister if he will make an official visit to the south-east of Scotland.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Wilson): I hope to visit Scotland again in the autumn, Sir.

Mr. Ancram: I look forward to the Prime Minister's visit. In the meantime, will he visit some of the many thousands of people in my constituency who have to use their motor cars as a necessity of life and explain to them how, having directly increased the cost of petrol by 4p a gallon since he came to office, he and his colleagues can still claim that they are reducing the cost of living for such people?

The Prime Minister: Petrol and the tax on petrol have been covered in the debates over the last two days, including the reduction in VAT. What my right hon. Friends said in that debate was in relation to the cost of living as a whole.

Mr. John Smith: Does my right hon. Friend realise—I am sure he does—that when he comes to Scotland he will be widely welcomed for the sort of deci

sions to Scotland's benefit which have been taken in the last two or three weeks, relating to the Offshore Supplies Office, the British National Oil Corporation and, above all, the recent doubling of the regional employment premium, which is worth £40 million in Scotland and is welcomed by all sides of industry?

The Prime Minister: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The REP increase is welcome to industry generally in Scotland. Both that and the North Sea gas and oil proposals have been opposed by right hon. and hon. Members opposite—a fact which will no doubt be noted in due course in Scotland.

Mr. Steel: Will the right hon. Gentleman make a point of visiting the special conference of the Labour Party in Scotland to convey the views of the Labour Party Executive on devolution for Scotland?

The Prime Minister: I am aware of the special conference and of the resolution passed yesterday. We hope to publish a White Paper on the whole question in the near future, covering Wales as well as Scotland.

Mr. MacCormack: Will the Prime Minister arrange to extend his visit to the islands off the coast of Scotland? If he does, will he arrange to take a large sum of money with him, as he will find it expensive? Will he influence the Secretary of State for Scotland to take some action to reduce the costs of travel there?

The Prime Minister: I never carry large sums of money when visiting either Scotland or my native county of Yorkshire. The money for Scotland has already been greatly increased by the doubling of REP.

Mr. William Hamilton: Will my right hon. Friend give the exact date of his visit in the autumn? Will he tell the Scottish people that the Labour Party, and, I think, the Tory Party, are completely opposed to any idea of separatism in Scotland as enunciated by the SNP and federalism as enunciated by the Liberal Party, both of which were rejected by Kilbrandon?

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir. Concerning dates, an announcement has been made of one forthcoming visit. In regard to any other dates, I ask my hon. Friend


to give me notice of that question. With regard to the substantive points in the latter part of the question, not only he but the Government totally reject any proposals for separatism in relation to Scotland.

Mr. Rifkind: When the Prime Minister visits Scotland, will he also visit Edinburgh—the one part of Scotland which does not have the benefit of development area status? Does the Prime Minister realise that the recent doubling of the REP by the Chancellor exaggerated the disadvantages from which Leith suffers, and will he take urgent action to remedy this anomaly, which began under the previous Labour Government?

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir, I am aware of the strong feelings on the question of Leith, Edinburgh, and so on. Concerning this matter, as the hon. Gentleman delicately failed to imply, as it began before 1970 it must have continued between 1970 and the present time. But, of course, all of Scotland will benefit by the Government's proposals on North Sea gas and oil.

Oral Answers to Questions — ECONOMIC POLICY (CHANCELLOR'S SPEECH)

Mr. Tim Renton: asked the Prime Minister whether the speech made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, calling for reflationary policies to overcome oil deficits, on 10th July, to the American Chamber of Commerce, represents Government policy.

Mr. Nigel Lawson: asked the Prime Minister if the public speech by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on economic policy to the American Chamber of Commerce on 10th July represents Government policy.

Mr. Norman Lamont: asked the Prime Minister whether the speech by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the American Chamber of Commerce on 10th July on economic matters represents Government policy.

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir.

Mr. Renton: Will the Prime Minister tell the House whether he would prefer to enter the very difficult year that lies

ahead of us enjoying the approximately £3,000 million balance of payments surplus that Germany currently has, or with Britain's £4,000 million deficit? Will he then pause and reflect for a moment, after his electioneering speech last night, on the fact that Germany is achieving that balance of payments surplus by deflation and by encouraging private enterprise at every turn, and how that contrasts with his Chancellor's policies?

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir. If the hon. Member was listening to my very objective speech yesterday he would know that there was a very severe balance of payments deficit in this country under the previous Government, before the advent of the oil problem, and that in the last few months this has fallen very substantially. But the points he has raised were covered at great length in the last two days in the debate on the economic situation, and the views of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor were obviously so persuasive that the Conservative Opposition decided to support the Government last night.

Mr. Lawson: If the Prime Minister really is concerned to procure a harmony of economic and industrial policies within the Western world, might it not be the most sensible first step for the Government to drop their doctrinaire proposals for nationalisation and State control?

The Prime Minister: Harmony is concerned within the Western world. I have had discussions on this with the Federal German Chancellor, and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has also been discussing these matters within the last week. I think that the first need for harmony is not only in relation to petro-dollars but in order to persuade Germany and certain other countries to follow the same policies that we are following, and to avoid any approach to deflation.

Mr. Edwin Wainwright: Will my right hon. Friend take into account that the Chancellor has said that any attempt by the Western countries rapidly to eliminate the balance of payments deficit caused by the oil situation would be a recipe for disaster? Will he comment on the "mournful minnies" opposite, with their carping criticisms of the Chancellor's mini-Budget, which was intended to


increase employment and help the balance of payments?

The Prime Minister: I hope that my hon. Friend will not be unfair to right hon. and hon. Members of the Opposition. Whatever they may have said they did not mean, otherwise they would not have supported the Government in the Division Lobby.

Mr. Lamont: Did the right hon. Gentleman notice the important remarks of the Chancellor in that speech about the strain on the capacity of the banking system? Is he aware that there is some concern about the reserve ratios of the clearing banks? Would it not be a good idea for the Prime Minister to emphasise that in order to maintain advances to industry it is in the interests of everyone in this country that the clearing banks should continue to earn high profits?

The Prime Minister: I do not go along with the hon. Gentleman about high profits. The banks got vast uncovenanted profits earlier this year. That is the main reason for the wage settlement between the banks and their employees, who have naturally seen the height of those profits. On the serious point raised by the hon. Gentleman at the beginning of his question, in relation to the strain on the banks, the Chancellor and I referred to this same problem yesterday. The hon. Gentleman will know—I think that he is something of a monetarist, although I may be wrong, as I am not sure how he voted last night—that under the present Government there has been a much sharper fall in the inflationary situation caused by the printing of money, which was one of the main characteristics of the Government who preceded us.

Mr. Skinner: Referring back to the question of how the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Lawson) voted last night, is my right hon. Friend aware that some of us will need a little advice—although not a great deal—during the course of the forthcoming campaign as to which of the Opposition coalitions we fight on successive days? For instance, 14 per cent. of the Liberals joined 9 per cent. of the Tories and decided to fight us or the ratepayers, or both, in the Division Lobby last night. Will my right hon. Friend help us by telling us which battle we shall be fighting against which coalition on the

days in question during the election campaign that is coming shortly?

The Prime Minister: That is a very serious question. I agree, as I forecast last night, that even the Petty Coalition disappeared last night. But I had not allowed for the confusion on the Conservative and Liberal benches. However, the advice that my hon. Friend seeks is that he will be fighting the next General Election on the record of the present Government and their policies, and the total absence of policy of the Conservative Party.

Mr. Tapsell: Is it not clear, whatever the Chancellor may say, that if Britain reflates at a time when most of our industrial competitors are deflating it will inevitably produce, in the course of time, an increase in the already vast balance of payments deficit, a run on sterling, the final collapse of the market in British Government securities, and a rate of inflation at home which will threaten the continuance of our democratic institutions?

The Prime Minister: My right hon. Friend and I both warned very seriously of the problems that we were facing. We did not accept some of the arguments put forward by the minority who voted last night as the right way of dealing with these problems.

Oral Answers to Questions — BLACKPOOL

Mr. Ashton: asked the Prime Minister whether he will pay an official visit to Blackpool.

The Prime Minister: I am looking forward to being in Blackpool again later this year, although I have no plans for an official visit.

Mr. Ashton: Will the Prime Minister tell us what he will say to the Labour Party Conference in reply to the proud pledges given to remove the disqualifications of the Clay Cross councillors, given last year and reiterated four months ago, which have now led to a vote of 20 to 2 at Transport House, in the NEC, and a delegation coming to meet him regarding this matter?

The Prime Minister: There is no need to await a visit to Blackpool. I dealt


with the question of the legal disqualification in my statement in April. My right hon. Friend will shortly have an announcement to make on this question.

Mr. Churchill: Is the Prime Minister aware that Blackpool, together with the rest of the north-west of England, is being particularly hard hit by the policies of his Government, which have produced a current rate of increase in unemployment of 10,000 per month? Are not the measures announced by the Chancellor in his electioneering Budget wholly irrelevant, with their promises of 20,000 more jobs by the end of next year, when jobs are being lost at a rate of 10,000 a month?

The Prime Minister: I am as well aware as the hon. Gentleman about the position in the North-West, because, like him, I am a North-West constituency Member. But my right hon. Friend dealt very fully with the argument about the figure of 20,000 in the debate yesterday afternoon. The hon. Gentleman did vote last night. Obviously, my right hon. Friend did not satisfy the hon. Gentleman as much as he satisfied the official Opposition.

Mr. Heath: If the Prime Minister's right hon. Friend is to make a statement about the Clay Cross councillors, will the Prime Minister assure the House that it will be made before the House rises, and made to the House?

The Prime Minister: I am not sure how long this will take—there are a number of inquiries to make—but the policy will be in entire accordance with what I said in the House in April.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Edward Heath: Will the Leader of the House kindly give us the business for next week?

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Edward Short): The business for next week will be as follows:
MONDAY 29TH JULY—Second Reading of the Consolidated Fund (Appropriation) Bill. Motion on the Northern Ireland (Appropriation) Order.
TUESDAY 30TH JULY—Remaining stages of the Consolidated Fund (Appro

priation) Bill. Consideration of Lords amendments to the Trade Union and Labour Relations Bill. Remaining stages of the Rent Bill [Lords]. Motions on the salaries of the Comptroller and Auditor General and the Parliamentary Commissioner, and on the Calculation of Redundancy Payments Order. Remaining stages of the Insurance Companies Bill [Lords], which is a consolidation measure. Consideration of any other Lords amendments which may be received.
WEDNESDAY 31ST JULY—It Will be proposed that the House should meet at 11 a.m., take Questions until 12 noon, and adjourn at 5 p.m. until Tuesday, 15th October. If these recess arrangements are agreed to, Mr. Speaker, the business for the week when the House resumes will be:
TUESDAY 15TH OCTOBER—A debate on Scottish affairs.
WEDNESDAY 16TH OCTOBER—Remaining stages of the Channel Tunnel Bill.
THURSDAY 17TH OCTOBER—Second Reading of the Housing Rents and Subsidies Bill.
FRIDAY 18TH OCTOBER—Debate on the report of the Nugent Committee on Defence Lands, and on the Sandford Report on Land in National Parks.

Mr. Heath: Does the Leader of the House appreciate that there is deep concern in all parts of the House about the continuing situation in Cyprus? Will he give an undertaking that the Foreign Secretary will make a statement to the House on either Monday or Tuesday next week after he returns from the discussions on Cyprus?
As the Government are intending to introduce fresh Bills after we return from the recess, will the right hon. Gentleman assure the House, naturally in confidence, that as a Second Reading takes place only the week after the return the Government intend to continue this Session into 1975?

Mr. Short: I gladly give the undertaking the right hon. Gentleman sought in the first part of his supplementary question. The Foreign Secretary will be making a statement about Cyprus next week. On the second point, we have so far had only a few months of the Session, and a normal Session is about a year, but


I will bear in mind what the right hon. Gentleman said.

Mr. Raphael Tuck: Does my right hon. Friend recall that a short while ago I was the leader of the revolting MPs—[Laughter.] I am sorry; I phrased that rather unhappily. I was the leader of the MPs who revolted on night storage heating charges. At the time my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy gave the assurance that he would review the whole situation and return to the House with his plans before the House rose for the recess. When will the Secretary of State make that statement?

Mr. Short: My hon. Friend terrifies us all so much when he leads a rebellion that my right hon. Friend will certainly make a statement before the recess.

Mr. Grimond: Do I understand that there is to be no debate on North Sea oil before the House rises? Since the Leader of the House is clearly seized of the impossibility of dissolving Parliament without discussing the Kilbrandon Report, will he give an assurance that there will be no General Election before 15th October?

Mr. Short: There will not be time for a debate on North Sea oil before the recess. I have nothing at all to say on the second point.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there is a dispute at present affecting the London local government officers who work in certain borough councils, and that in Newham, Tower Hamlets and other boroughs the matter has become so serious that rubbish is now being dumped in the streets—[Interruption.] This is not a laughing matter, because some of this rubbish is being dumped outside hospitals. [Interruption.] If hon. Members believe it is a laughing matter, I hope they may have the same difficulty of refuse being dumped outside their street doors. Unless something is done, that is what will happen. My constituents will be coming here and dumping their rubbish outside the House of Commons. [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. The House has a great deal of business to do, and I hope that the hon. Member will be permitted to put his question in silence.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: Why is it that the Government can always help the top civil servants to get their increases, as they will next week, but appear unable to do anything for the local government officers, the nurses and the rest? I warn my right hon. Friend that unless some-this is done I shall oppose the Parliamentary Ombudsman and the other top civil servants getting their increases next week.

Mr. Short: I rather thought that my hon. Friend would do that, but I shall bear in mind what he said and pass his comments on to my two right hon. Friends.

Mr. Evelyn King: Some weeks ago the right hon. Gentleman gave an assurance that the Nugent Report would be debated before the House rose. Regrettably, I understand that the right hon. Gentleman is not now able to fulfill that undertaking. If that is so, will he at least assure us that no decision will be taken in this matter, which affects Dorset and other counties in which there are military lands, until the matter has been debated as we were promised?

Mr. Short: I did not promise that there would be a debate before the recess. I promised that there would be a debate some time on the Nugent Report, and I found the first available date for that. I should have thought that if the Government were prepared to accept a number of the Nugent proposals it would make sense to say so, but I will bear in mind what the hon. Member said. I cannot give any undertaking, however.

Mr. McNamara: Is my right hon. Friend aware that we were naturally disappointed that we were not able to come to a decision on the Hare Coursing Bill, but that was more than compensated for when my right hon. Friend said that the Government would introduce the Bill as a Government measure when the House reassembled? The people of this country who detest this abominable sport will be looking for a statement in the manifestos of the Opposition parties when the time comes for them to seek re-election that they would also introduce it as a Government measure.

Mr. Short: Last week an hon. Member on the Opposition side actually accused me of cheating because I was proposing


to give a small amount of time for the Second Reading of the Bill. In order to avoid that state of affairs we have adopted the Bill as a Government measure and it will be brought forward for Second Reading very soon after we return.

Sir David Renton: Is the passing of the Housing Rents and Subsidies Bill an essential part of the social contract, and, if so, when does the right hon. Gentleman expect it to reach the statute book?

Mr. Short: I have announced the date for the Second Reading in the week we return. The Bill will make normal progress. It is part of the social contract between the Government and the British people.

Mr. William Hamilton: Will my right hon. Friend say whether my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Civil Service Department, will be making a statement about the dispersal of civil servants from London? Does he recognise that all Scottish Members resent very much the references by certain civil servants to Glasgow and to the undesirability of going there or anywhere else in Scotland? Will my right hon. Friend say whether the Secretary of State for Social Services will be making a statement about the Halsbury Report before the Summer Recess?

Mr. Short: On the first point, I agree that Glasgow is one of the most desirable places in the country and that any civil servant should be proud to go there. I hope that the Government will be able to announce next week a major dispersal exercise. I do not know what the answer is to my hon. Friend's second point, but I shall find out and write to him.

Mr. Peyton: Will the Leader of the House next week, even if it should come just as one of the last sad obsequies to this miserable Parliament, make a statement as to what is to happen to the vast volume of unprinted, unpublished papers which is hanging about somewhere in limbo? Personally, I am not anxious to read it, but I hope that the Leader of the House will bear in mind that one of the most sombre indications of the way in which Parliament has sunk is the fact that it cannot even produce its own paper in order and in time.

Mr. Short: No doubt the right hon. Gentleman does not want to read it, but I am sure that posterity will wish to read what happened in this Parliament.

Mr. Blenkinsop: I welcome my right hon. Friend's announcement of the debate on Friday 18th October on the Nugent Report and the National Park report. May I emphasise the value of having an early Government statement of their proposals, particularly with regard to national parks but also with regard to defence lands?

Mr. Short: I thank my hon. Friend for what he has said. It was he who suggested having a debate on the two subjects on the same day. I shall pass on what he said about a statement on the Sandford Report to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment.

Sir Frederic Bennett: The Leader of the House will recall the time before the present printing strike when the form was that answers to Oral Questions which were not reached were provided for the hon. Members who had asked them between 4 p.m. and 4.30 p.m. on the board outside the Chamber. That practice has not always been observed recently. But that is not the question I am trying to ask. What I should like to know is, whether, as answers to Written Questions which, at worst, one received in HANSARD the following morning, are not being received, there is any difficulty in Ministries sending answers to Written Questions to be put on the board between 4 p.m. and 4.30 p.m. Obviously, as they are Written Questions, there is no reason why, without any involvement with the printing dispute, they should not be provided in some way.

Mr. Short: In the early stages of the dispute I discovered that Written Answers were not being printed. That was brought to my attention by an hon. Member. We are now ensuring that they are produced. If there is a delay, I shall look into the matter.

Mr. Arthur Latham: What are my right hon. Friend's plans for the implementations of the recommendations recently made to him by Lord Boyle? Will he accept that this is an urgent matter?

Mr. Short: With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I shall be making a statement on the matter next Monday.

Mr. Donald Stewart: Will the right hon. Gentleman seek the early reconstitution of the Select Committee on Procedure? Is he aware of the protests made last night by the Leader of the Liberal Party and me about the position in which we land ourselves in this Parliament, when the largest of the Opposition parties, against all military precedents, sounds the retreat when it scents victory, thereby depriving the parties with a real point of view to put forward of the opportunity to do so? Will the right hon. Gentleman make that matter the first priority of the Committee, and set it up as soon as possible?

Mr. Short: There certainly is a case for reassembling the Select Committee on Procedure after the recess, not just for that reason but for a number of reasons. The agenda is decided in discussion between the two sides of the House.

Mr. Prior: May I press the right hon. Gentleman on the subject of parliamentary papers. The position is now extremely unsatisfactory. What is happening? May we have a statement from the Government? Why is the dispute dragging on? How much is it costing? Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that, although not everyone wants to read the papers, the situation is very inconvenient for every hon. Member? We are very grateful for the efforts of those who have done the work, but that does not alter the fact that the situation is a breach of the privileges of the House, and should be put right.

Mr. Short: It may be a breach of the privileges of the House, but it occurred very often when the right hon. Gentleman was doing my job. If the House wishes, I can give details of all the many occasions when there were printing disputes. I have apologised to the House many times for the inconvenience, which I agree exists. But I have checked the position concerning papers for next week's business, as I have done each week for some time, and all the papers will be available in time.

Mr. Skinner: Does my right hon. Friend expect my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade to

make a statement about the investigations going on into the crash of the London and County Securities group, especially as today, I have received another letter from an anxious old-age pensioner, a church minister, who had £713 invested in the company and does not know which way to turn? Would not it be a good idea to ask the Leader of the Liberal Party to surrender all that appearance money that he received for opening those banks which were taking money away from investors—

Mr. Speaker: Order. That kind of personal imputation is very distasteful.

Dr. Winstanley: Are we to understand from the right hon. Gentleman's statement that the Social Security Amendment Bill has met the same fate as the Hare Coursing Bill? If that is so, what is to be done about the increased contributions which were to pay for the increased benefits payable in July?

Mr. Short: The Session has not yet ended. It will go on after the recess.

Mr. Teddy Taylor: Will the Leader of the House ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to make a statement early next week about the acute and worsening shortage of sugar in many parts of the country, which is causing a shambles in many shops?

Mr. Short: I shall call the attention of my right hon. Friend to the hon. Gentleman's point, but we have quite a queue of statements for the remaining days before the recess.

Mr. Fidler: Will the right hon. Gentleman promise to make a statement on allowances for hon. Members' secretaries, mileage and other expenses in London before the recess?

Mr. Short: I said about three minutes ago that I would make a statement on the matter next Monday.

Sir John Rodgers: Reverting to the printing of HANSARD and parliamentary papers, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman to tell us what steps he has taken to deal with the industrial dispute? Has he any plans to get HANSARD and the parliamentary papers printed before we rise?

Mr. Short: The Government intervened unsuccessfully at one stage, and


the dispute continues. We shall intervene again if we think that our intervention will serve any useful purpose. My job is to ensure that Parliament has the papers for the appropriate business.

Mr. Kilfedder: What time will be available for the Northern Ireland (Appropriation) Order debate? I protest at that business being taken late on Monday night or perhaps early on Tuesday morning. Can we debate on that subject the political appointment to the newly-created post of public relations consultant to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland?

Mr. Short: I cannot say anything about the hon. Gentleman's second point. The motion on the order is the second on Monday. It follows the Second Reading debate on the Consolidated Fund (Appropriation) Bill, which goes on for a long time. I cannot say how much time will be available. That is a matter for the House.

Mr. George Lawson: As my right hon. Friend tells us that the Government intend to adopt the Hare Coursing Bill, could he have the Government adopt a little Bill that I introduced on only the 16th of this month, seeking to protect an old couple in my constituency who have had £599·50 of their money taken from them by Chandris Shipping Lines Ltd.? Will my right hon. Friend look after the interests of such people? Will he see whether something effective can be done, and quickly?

Mr. Short: If my hon. Friend will give me the particulars, I shall take the matter up and see whether the Government can do anything about it.

Mr. Ridsdale: When may we have a debate on the extension of the dock labour scheme, particularly as it is nothing more nor less than nationalisation by the back door?

Mr. Short: Not next week.

Sir Harmar Nicholls: Even at this late hour, is it possible to arrange a debate next week on the motion calling for capital punishment for indiscriminate bombing?
[That, having regard to recent events when innocent people have been

slaughtered by indiscriminate bombing, this House calls upon Her Majesty's Government to introduce legislation to make such crimes subject to capital punishment.]
Erstwhile abolitionists have signed the motion. We have seen over past months outside sections defying the will of Parliament. We must ensure that Parliament does not appear to be defying the will of the nation.
If the right hon. Gentleman cannot arrange a debate next week, will he ask the Home Secretary to refer to the matter in his speech later today? We respect his convictions, stated in the atmosphere of a few years ago, but in the dangerous atmosphere of today we should not have the Home Secretary giving the impression of allowing personal stubbornness to affect his decisions.

Mr. Short: I am sure that my right hon. Friend will take due note of what the hon. Gentleman has said. Today is an appropriate day to discuss that very matter.

Mr. Stokes: Reverting to the printing dispute, may I ask how much the printers are being paid weekly for not producing HANSARD?

Mr. Short: If the hon. Gentleman will consult HANSARD for 18th July, he will find that a Question on that point was answered.

Mr. Cormack: When will the motion for the Adjournment for the Summer Recess be taken next week? If the social contract is finally agreed during the recess, will the right hon. Gentleman arrange for printed copies to be circulated to hon. Members?

Mr. Short: I hope to put before the House the motion for the Adjournment for the recess on Monday, before we come to the Consolidated Fund Bill.
The hon. Gentleman does not understand what the social contract is about. As I have said, it is not just a contract between the Government and the trade unions but a contract between the Government and the people, in that the Government will follow fair policies and try to create a fair society and the people will respond appropriately.

Mr. English: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the printing disputes have been going on under successive Governments for many years, ever since three separate groups of printers were put together in one establishment? Will my right hon. Friend also confirm that some of the printers at present on strike are working for Conservative newspapers?

Mr. Short: I do not wish to comment on that final point, but my hon. Friend is right in saying that, unfortunately, these disputes have been going on for some years.

Mr. Adley: What is going on? One moment the right hon. Gentleman tells us about a social contract between the trade unions and the Government and the next moment he confirms that we have gone more than four weeks without papers. What is the right hon. Gentleman doing to see that Parliament gets properly printed papers?

Mr. Short: I am sure that Parliament has had the papers for the business which has come before it. I have said on many occasions that Parliament is suffering great inconvenience and that I very much regret it. If industrial relations generally had not been gummed up as they were by the Conservative Government, the situation might be rather better.

Mr. Tom King: Will the right hon. Gentleman arrange for the Secretary of State for Industry to make a statement before the recess in order to remove the increasing uncertainty about the Government's proposals for further nationalisation? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is yet another leak in the Press today? We were told that it would be a Green Paper; then the right hon. Gentleman said that it would be a White Paper; today's leak says that it will be a consultative White Paper. What are the Government going to do?

Mr. Short: Over the next few weeks the Government will be publishing their policy on industry and many other things as well.

Mr. Dykes: The right hon. Gentleman's glib and superficial answers about the printing dispute are causing deep resentment in all parts of the House. When is he going to fulfil his obligations properly as Leader of the House by ensur

ing that urgent action is taken? If necessary, will he arrange for parliamentary papers to be printed abroad?

Mr. Short: I will ensure, as I have done so far, that the papers are available for the business of the House.

Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles: In view of the uncertainty affecting Service personnel and our international relations, can the right hon. Gentleman say whether the Government intend to publish their defence review as soon as it is completed or wait until the next Session?

Mr. Short: I cannot say when, but I imagine that in the early autumn the defence White Paper will be published. We have been carrying out a radical, major review, and it is, naturally, taking a long time.

Mr. Rost: When will the Foreign Secretary make a statement about the progress of his renegotiations of the Common Market terms? Is it not most unsatisfactory, and a breach and abuse of the privilege of this House, that the Foreign Secretary should make such a statement in detail to the Parliamentary Labour Party yesterday—which was leaked to the Press—without making a statement to this House?

Mr. Short: I do not think that it is a breach of anything, but I will convey what the hon. Gentleman has said to my right hon. Friend.

Mr. Peter Mills: As the Minister of Agriculture came back from Brussels with a statement about beef some time ago now, is it not time that the House and the farmers had some details of what he has arranged? Is it not intolerable that we should rise for the Summer Recess without having these details? May we have a statement before adjourning for the recess?

Mr. Short: I realise that there is some anxiety on this matter and I will consult my right hon. Friend.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. We must move on. Perhaps I may cheer up the House by stating that 94 right hon. and hon. Members propose to seek to catch my eye on the Second Reading of the Consolidated Fund Bill on Monday.

PALACE OF WESTMINSTER (SECURITY)

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Edward Short): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement about the security in the Palace of Westminster.
At the Government's request, with the approval of Mr. Speaker and the Lord Chancellor, the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis has agreed that the Deputy Commissioner, Mr. James Starritt, should arrange for a special assessment of security in the Palace of Westminster to be made under his direction by the present head of the Metropolitan Police Crime Prevention Branch. With the co-operation of the authorities in both Houses, the police will work in close liaison with the Security Co-ordinator, the Chief Inspector in charge of police in the Palace of Westminster and the Superintendent of Custodians. The assessment will cover both Houses of Parliament and will pay particular attention to the question of public access and the security of individual rooms. Mr. Starritt will report to Mr. Speaker and to the Lord Chancellor.
I feel sure that the Deputy Commissioner will wish to take full account of the valuable work that the Services Committee has been doing on security matters.
The House will wish me to express our thanks to Mr. Starritt for undertaking this review.

Mr. Heath: The House is grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his statement. Perhaps he could indicate whether it is mainly concerned with the security of papers in Ministers' and other Members' rooms or also includes the question of possible terrorist activity in the Palace as a whole.
Could the right hon. Gentleman also indicate why it is necessary to have a review of this kind and extent when we have the appointment of our own security co-ordinator? Many of us have been under the impression that it was his responsibility to recommend action to the Services Committee about the security of the Palace as a continuing matter. Naturally, if that is not possible, we wel

come the fact that there should be a review, but perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will tell us the extent of its coverage.

Mr. Short: The review goes very much wider than the security of papers. It is a very wide review indeed. The present security arrangements in the House are based upon a review carried out by the then head of the Metropolitan Police Crime Prevention Branch in 1969, and I understand that all our security arrangements are based on that report. However, there is now a number of new factors in the situation, and we felt that there should be another independent review of our security arrangements. That is why I have asked Mr. Starritt to undertake it.

Mr. Bottomley: I thank my right hon. Friend for his kind reference to the Services Committee. Is it intended that those conducting the inquiry will take over some of the work at present carried out by the Committee?

Mr. Short: I feel sure that Mr. Starritt will work in very close co-operation with my right hon. Friend and the Services Committee. I think that my right hon. Friend knows Mr. Starritt personally and will therefore confirm that he has a tremendous feeling for Parliament and parliamentary democracy.

Mr. David Steel: I welcome the right hon. Gentleman's statement, but can he indicate the time scale of the survey and when we may expect the report? Will he confirm that any action resulting from the report will be a matter for both Houses themselves to decide?

Mr. Short: I have not set any time limit, but I have told Mr. Starritt that if he wishes to submit interim reports along the way we shall be glad to receive them. I think that in most cases what he recommends will be a matter for the two Houses, but of course there may well be some confidential matters which will obviously not come to the House.

Mr. Leslie Huckfield: Can my right hon. Friend say whether the survey will cover some of the outlying premises used by hon. Members—for example, Dean's Yard, Palace Chambers and Bridge Street?

Mr. Short: It will cover all premises used by the House and by hon. Members.

EEC MINISTERIAL MEETINGS

The Secretary of State for Trade and President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Peter Shore): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement about the Council of Foreign Ministers' meeting in Brussels on 22nd and 23rd July. There were three main items of business, the negotiations with Mediterranean countries, negotiations with the African, Caribbean and Pacific States and energy policy.
As regards the first item, the Council adopted a new mandate for the negotiations with Mediterranean countries. This should make it possible for the negotiations with the Mediterranean countries concerned to be carried to an early conclusion.
This should mean improved access for our exporters to the important and fast-growing markets of Spain and Israel. In 1973, our exports to these two countries were valued at £227 million and £187 million respectively. In both cases we would by 1st July 1977 enjoy the same advantages in the two markets as the Six. With Spain we would have completely free entry into their market for most industrial products by 1980. In the case of Israel the timetable is somewhat slower, but we would have free entry over 60 per cent. of Israel's industrial imports by that year. At the same time, in the important area of imports of foodstuffs from Spain, Israel and the other Mediterranean countries concerned, we have secured an outcome under which, over the larger part of our imports, we shall be able to maintain a tariff no higher than or below our pre-accession rate.
As regards the negotiations with the African, Caribbean and Pacific States, the Council prepared the way for the Ministerial Conference with those States at Kingston on 25th and 26th July. The Council was able to agree on the line which the President of the Council should take at the conference on the size of the European Development Fund and the question of trade reciprocity. On the last point it was agreed that reciprocity should not be required from the developing countries. The agreement on this point meets the views of Her Majesty's Government and will, we believe, be welcomed by

the ACP countries, including the Commonwealth countries.
It was not, however, possible to reach agreement on the arrangements to be made on imports of sugar. Nor was it possible to agree on means of mitigating the instability of ACP States' exports to the Community of primary commodities. It is hoped that EEC Ministers will be able to pursue these questions further at Kingston.
Finally, the Council of Ministers had a preliminary discussion of the Commission's proposals for a new Community energy policy. We were invited to approve a draft resolution setting the broad guidelines for such a policy but I was unable to agree to the draft in front of us since it seemed to me to be premature. I explained that we are certainly not opposed to the development of a sensible Community energy policy, but we believe that there are specific aspects of it which require much further discussion between experts of member States. The Council will resume its discussion of energy policy at its meeting on 16th-17th September.

Mr. Rippon: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his statement. May I welcome the progress that has been made in the negotiations with the Mediterranean countries which, as the Minister says, will open up new markets for our exporters in Spain, Israel and elsewhere. As his enthusiasm for reaching these agreements is sometimes doubted, no doubt unfairly, will the right hon. Gentleman take the opportunity of confirming that he is negotiating in all these matters in good faith for an early and successful result and that he is in favour in principle of British membership of the Community?
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that I welcome his confirmation that the Government fully support the idea of working towards a sensible Community energy policy? Will he explain why it is that so little progress has been made, because it is over two months since the Commission's report was presented? What consultations have been taking place since? Will the right hon. Gentleman also explain exactly what timings he thinks are premature and what aspects of the targets are over-ambitious?
Is he aware that there is a general feeling that his rather unhelpful attitude towards energy policy, or so it appears


from reports—although I am sure that they are not true—appears to have damaged the negotiations on sugar and the agreements with the developing countries? I know that the right hon. Gentleman will understand when I say that part of his statement was disappointing apart from the welcome agreement on reciprocity. Will he confirm that both the Commission and the European Parliament have endorsed the 1·4 million tons of sugar? Will he accept that both sides of the House are well aware of the specific and moral commitments given by the Community and that we expect it to hold to those commitments?
In the changed world situation, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman to say something about the position with regard to Australian sugar? Will he say whether the Government are invoking the provisions of Protocol No. 16 with regard to markets in agricultural products from developed countries? Bearing in mind the discussions that will be taking place in Jamaica, may I ask the Secretary of State to confirm and perhaps expand the Government's attitude towards a Community stabilisation fund in the new association agreements and towards the other matters on which he says it has not been possible to arrive at a satisfactory solution?
Finally—and this is central to his activities—will he make clear his unequivocal acceptance of collective Cabinet responsibility in these matters and his determination to secure, if he can, continued British membership of the Community?

Mr. Shore: I do not think the right hon. and learned Gentleman expects me to reply to all of the insults which he has traded across the Box. What I will do is to answer the serious questions he put to me. I will deal first with the Mediterranean mandate. There should be no question in anyone's mind but that we are in favour, and always have been, of any serious negotiations which have the effect of enlarging the area of freedom of trade between this country and other countries. It is in that spirit and against that general background that the agreement—we hope that it will become an agreement—should be seen and judged.
I come to this question of sugar. When the right hon. and learned Gentleman asks

me whether I am negotiating in good faith, I have to tell him that what I was concerned about for the greater part of the debate we had on sugar was to rescue his good faith. That was what the issue was about. The House should know that I found, to my great amazement and disappointment, that those "bankable assurances", the specific and moral commitments about which the right hon. and learned Gentleman assured this House, the country, and the ACP countries on 17th May 1971, were not accepted within the Community. It is because they were not accepted that I would agree to a mandate on sugar. To do so without that acceptance would have been to put me in the position not only of breaking faith with those countries but of breaking what we assumed to be the good faith of the right hon. and learned Gentleman and his colleagues. I hope that that point can be fully registered.
I come to the energy policy. Let there be no question of there being any connection between this subject and the sugar issue. As it happens, in the sequence of events at Brussels, it was the sugar and ACP question of Protocol 22 that preceded the Council discussion on energy matters. It was the difficulty on sugar that preceded the difficulties on the energy policy. All I need to say about energy policy is that it does not seem that two months is a long time, with a serious subject such as this, in which to consider the kind of propositions, some very far-reaching, which the Commission had put forward.
I hold to the view that it is wrong to subscribe to broad principles, underdefined in their application, until we have a clear view about that is involved. We therefore believe that these matters should be much more seriously examined than we have been able to examine them so far.

Mr. Jay: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that other members of the EEC were unwilling to accept what were described as "bankable assurances" by the right hon. and learned Gentleman and the Leader of the Opposition and that therefore these bankable assurances were just another parliamentary deceit?

Mr. Shore: I try to avoid bandying insults across the Box. I win not comment on whether the right hon. and


learned Gentleman was misled. I think that this was partly the case.
It is true, as emerged in our long discussion on this subject—and I spent many hours on it—that the other Community countries maintained that no promise had ever been made by the Community in respect of the 1·4 million tons which this House has debated and about which hon. Members have spoken so much. Because of the uncertainties on this matter, I must make it plain that we have not abandoned our efforts to persuade them to accept the 1·4 million. I certainly gave, I hope on behalf of the whole House, an undertaking that we would fulfil our pledge.

Mr. Maudling: Would the right hon. Gentleman give an answer to one specific question asked by my right hon. and learned Friend? Does he or does he not share the desire of the Foreign Secretary to bring the current negotiations to successful conclusion, as the result of which he can recommend to the country that we remain within the Common Market?

Mr. Shore: I share the view of my colleagues and, I think, the greater part of the country that we should bring these matters to a conclusion at the earliest moment, that we should attain that fundamental renegotiation of the terms of entry to which we are committed and that we should then, if that be the case, look to the consent of our own people.

Mr. Grimond: Is the Secretary of State aware that we welcome the arrangements which he has made for increasing trade with the third world? May I ask a little more about energy policy? Can he confirm, as was stated, I think, by George Thomson, that the Community do not claim any rights of any sort over North Sea oil? Further, can he give some indication—I do not ask for details—as to particular aspects of this policy which he thinks need further examination?

Mr. Shore: It is a very long and complicated memorandum which the Commission has put forward and I think there are ambiguities as regards the interpretation of it. But for my part I certainly would take it that there could be no such claim, and therefore that point has to be made absolutely clear both here and, of course, in the Common Market.
Beyond the two general principles, to which the House, I think, would subscribe, that all of us in Western Europe, and indeed elsewhere, need to diminish our dependence on imported fuel supplies, and that all of us are working for a balanced fuel economy, there are, seriously, enormous areas to cover before we begin to agree to anything beyond formal declarations.

Dr. Dickson Mabon: Would my right hon. Friend convey the regret of the House to the Foreign Minister, who was understandably on business concerning Cyprus yesterday and Tuesday, that he was not able personally to attend the Council of Foreign Ministers on Tuesday? Can he confirm that the Continental beet sugar producers and cane sugar producers reached agreement prior to the endorsement of the Council of Ministers? Will he also confirm that another opportunity will arise in September of securing the endorsement of the Ministers of the principle of entry of 1·4 million tons of cane sugar, as agreed in Protocol 22? Is the meeting of EEC Ministers at Kingston today empowered, in fact, to take that decision?
May I ask, without any personal rancour at all, how he reconciles his public speech at lunchtime yesterday with membership of a Government seeking in good faith to renegotiate the terms of entry?

Mr. Shore: The speeches I may have made yesterday or on any other occasion are not before the House at the present time. I am entirely happy to be cross-examined on them and indeed on many other matters. I have no difficulty whatever in reconciling what I say in public with my collective responsibility.
The hon. Gentleman asked me a specific question whether the Council of Ministers is empowered to take a decision. We all hope that there will be an opportunity in Kingston—I cannot put it higher than that—to exchange further views on this question of sugar and I am still hoping very much, as, I am sure, is the whole House, for a better outcome.

Mr. Marten: Does the right hon. Gentleman recall that before we entered the Common Market the House was given a very firm assurance on this sugar question? Therefore the allegation which


he has made—I use the word allegation" carefully—against my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hexham (Mr. Rippon) impugns the honour of that right hon. and learned Gentleman. In view of the seriousness of what he has said, should he not prepare a White Paper setting out all the facts of the whole argument?

Mr. Shore: I take account of what the hon. Gentleman has said. Perhaps on some suitable occasion we should produce more information about the course of negotiations and events, but I must not be pressed at the moment for any clear or positive reply.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: The Secretary of State will know that I have an interest to declare in sugar cane—from a constituency, not a partaking, point of view. Now that we appear to be getting almost daily information from the EEC that this House was deliberately misled on a number of vital issues, and that the country was definitely not only misled but not even given an opportunity of knowing what was going on, can he give an assurance that he will consult the unions, the workers, Tate and Lyle, the sugar refiners and all who are connected with this issue so that they are not led up the garden as this House was led up the garden by the right hon. and learned Member for Hexham (Mr. Rippon)?

Mr. Short: It is no secret from the House that I think that the country was substantially misled on the whole negotiation and on the benefit that there might be to Britain, and so on. I have never disguised that view, and I hold it today. But I am not impugning in any way the honour of the right hon. and learned Gentleman in the sense of suggesting that there was any deliberate or particular deception. That is not my charge at all. I think the Government of that day put the whole case, backed, above all, by their own wish that certain events would come true. They gave an optimistic interpretation of things which I fear events have not justified.
As for the particular interests of cane sugar workers and sugar growers generally, I will bring this point to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.

Mr. Rippon: May I urge the Secretary of State not to weaken Britain's negotiating position by trying to undermine the validity of firm commitments entered into, by which I regard the Community as bound? May I therefore reiterate the support I gave him in the stand he was taking about sugar? All I said was that the Commission—and I hope he will confirm this—had endorsed the figure of 1·4 million and so had the European Parliament. The Commission and the European Parliament have both used that figure. But will he accept that in the changed world conditions the distribution among producers of that quota is a matter for discussion? Will he also answer my question about Australian sugar and whether he is invoking Protocol 16 to deal with that situation? Finally, will he answer the question on the stabilisation fund and the association agreement?

Mr. Shore: On the question of Australia, we are indeed considering the prospective deficit in our total sugar supply and we shall certainly be discussing this matter with the Australian Government. But that is a question for my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.
I come back to the point about 1·4 million tons. The right hon. and learned Gentleman said a moment ago that the figure of 1·4 million had been endorsed by the Commission. Indeed it was in the Commission's document which they presented last July. That is so. The Commission has been helpful in this whole matter, certainly in the discussions we had this week. The European Assembly may have passed an opinion in favour of the 1·4 million, and if the right hon. and learned Gentleman is right on that point, that is fine.
But I must bring home to him—I am sure that it has not escaped his attention—that the key organ of the EEC, the one that makes decisions, and the only one that in the end can make a commitment, is the Council of Ministers. It is specifically the fact that that commitment has not yet been endorsed in specific terms—to quote the words used by the right hon. and learned Gentleman over three years ago—and precisely because the Council of Ministers has not confirmed that commitment and did not confirm that commitment, that we were


in the difficulty in which we found ourselves two days ago.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I must protect the rights of the Opposition. This is Opposition Supply time and 25 Opposition Members wish to speak in the debate.

BILL PRESENTED

HOUSING RENTS AND SUBSIDIES

Mr. Secretary Crosland, supported by Mr. Edward Short, Mr. Roy Jenkins, Mrs. Shirley Williams, Mr. John Morris, Dr. John Gilbert, Mr. Reginald Freeson and Mr. Gerald Kaufman, presented a Bill to repeal certain provisions of the Housing Finance Act 1972 and to make new provision for housing rents and subsidies; and for connected purposes: and the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow; and to be printed. [Bill 104.]

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE (SUPPLY)

Ordered,
That this day, as soon as the House has entered upon the Business of Supply, Mr. Speaker shall put forthwith the Questions which, under the provisions of paragraph (11) of Standing Order No. 18 (Business of Supply), as amended by the Order of the House of 13th March, he is directed to put at Ten o'clock.—[Mr. Pavitt.]

Orders of the Day — SUPPLY

[14TH ALLOTTED DAY],—considered.

CIVIL AND DEFENCE ESTIMATES (EXCESSES) 1972–73

Mr. SPEAKER proceeded, pursuant to the order this day, to put forthwith the Question,
That a sum, not exceeding £9,950,113·24, be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund, to make good excesses on certain grants for Civil and Defence Services for the year ended 31st March 1973, as set out in House of Commons Paper No. 219.—[Dr. Gilbert.]

Question agreed to.

Orders of the Day — DEFENCE AND CIVIL ESTIMATES 1974–75 (OUTSTANDING VOTES)

Mr. SPEAKER proceeded, pursuant to the order this day, to put forthwith the Question,
That a sum, not exceeding £13,101,400,700, be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund to complete or defray the charges for Defence and Civil Services for the year ending on 31st March 1975.—[Dr. Gilbert.]

Question agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in upon the foregoing resolutions by the Chairman of Ways and Means, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Edmund Dell, Mr. Joel Barnett and Dr. John Gilbert.

Orders of the Day — CONSOLIDATED FUND (APPROPRIATION)

Bill to apply certain sums out of the Consolidated Fund to the service of the years ending on 31st March 1973 and 1975, to appropriate supplies granted in this Session of Parliament, and to repeal certain Consolidated Fund and Appropriation Acts, presented accordingly and read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 102.]

Orders of the Day — PUBLIC SAFETY AND RESPECT FOR THE LAW

Motion made, and Question proposedThat this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Pavitt.]

4.22 p.m.

Sir Keith Joseph: The Opposition have chosen as the subject for the debate today public safety and the decline in respect for the law.
I understand that it may be for the convenience of the House, Mr. Speaker, that in the debate reference may be made to the motion in the name of the Leader of the House on passes for Members and so on:
That Members and Officers of the House, the staff of the House and all persons who require to enter the precincts regularly on official duty or on the business of the House shall produce a photographic identification pass, provided by the authorities of the House, whenever so requested by the police officers or officials of either House responsible for security within the precincts or in the other parliamentary buildings in the vicinity; that the authorities of the House prepare and distribute such passes; and that the authorities of the House provide similar passes for Members' spouses, if so requested.
The Opposition would have no objection to that if it were the wish of the House.
The subject we have chosen is one that is deeply important to the public. I know that many of my hon. Friends wish to speak, so I shall seek to restrain my opening speech to a moderate length.
The first topic that must be covered is the protection of the public from normal crime. We are all, both in the House and in the country, conscious how fortunate we are in the standards and performance of our police forces. They are undermanned, they are overburdened, but they still seem to maintain extremely high standards in the face of every new task. They are suffering the worse wastage for 20 years, with most serious effects in the cities. The Opposition are determined—as we were last time in office—when we return to office to put the proper manning of the police force as one of our top priorities. We were making good progress last time, and we shall try to do even better next time.
We have the greatest respect for the work and the importance of the probation service and also for the difficult but

essential task of those who work in the prison service.
The evidence of the latest reports on the police is that, given proper manning, the police can get on top of crime. For instance, there has been a sharp drop in the number of robberies, responding it seems to the particular attention given by the police to setting up specialist anti-robbery forces. But the aspect that leaps from all the recent reports is the mounting momentum of juvenile crime, in many cases linked to the phenomenon of truancy.
It would be idle for me to spend much time on this huge subject, which is worthy of a debate on its own, but the essence is the standards in the home of the child. If the standards are high, if a child knows that he will sacrifice the approval of his parents, there is some hope that there will be neither truancy nor juvenile delinquency, but if standards at home are low, society and the child will suffer. We have not made things easier by raising the school leaving age or by failing to provide the resources to give substance to the Children and Young Persons Act or indeed by our town planning arrangements.
I understand that in one area where a great deal of truancy was discovered recently one local comment was that it was not altogether surprising because in that area there were 187 public houses and not a blade of grass or any opportunity for play for the children. Without being romantic and believing that recreation will abolish juvenile delinquency, I think it may well be that recreation, which is justified for its own sake, has something to do with the reduction of juvenile delinquency.
The large volume of juvenile crime should lead to a re-examination by the education world and the employment world of their policies. The comfort is that most young offenders turn into law-abiding citizens, although they certainly darken the lives of millions of peaceful, quiet people during their years of rampage, and that brings us back to the question of police numbers.
There is in this country an even more insidious attack on the law than the crime we are experiencing—as no doubt there is in every country—and that is the pervasive attack upon the free society. Many


separate and distinct trends are being experienced, some from outside, some from within. There are armed groups, some with specific purposes, some with apocalytic purposes. A wide range of political forces, using anything from subversion to ordinary lobbying, seek to swing our society away from freedom. Violence is condoned and is very near the surface. The far Left with totalitarian purpose is widely active in factories, schools, universities and communications. There are deliberate destroyers at large pursuing various ideologies to seek to provoke and discredit the police in order to advance their aim of eroding our liberties. These extreme movements can mobilise shifting but substantial support from the naive, and can, and do, exploit every sort of resentment, frustration and grievance.
In preparation for the debate I re-read the essay by George Orwell—I wish he were alive; he would spare no one of us—on the subject of what we would now call fanatical ideologies but which he called nationalisms. He wrote:
The world is tormented by innumerable delusions and hatreds".
In speaking of their origin he said:
It is enough to say that, in the forms in which it appears among English intellectuals it is a distorted reflection of the frightful battles actually happening in the external world, and that its worst follies"—
that is, the worst follies of ideological fanaticism—
have been made possible by the breakdown of patriotism and religious belief.
Certainly, no nation can be healthy without the twin elements of patriotism and mutual respect.
Against this ramifying hydra-headed, sometimes plausible, sometime fashionable, alliance of destructive forces, we on both sides of the House proudly and deliberately have only the powers, and no more than the powers, given to the authorities by law. We abide by the rule of law. These fanatics do not respect the law because they do not respect the rule of law. They are mostly in favour of some form of dictatorship. It is a depressing picture.
But we should count our blessings. The police are held high in public esteem. Demonstrations have been allowed by Governments of both parties and with,

alas, one exception recently, have passed off without serious casualties. The police have an enviable reputation. I believe all of us in the House and our constituents recognise that. What not all of our constituents recognise, what they do not understand, is why successive Governments do not do what seems obvious to them: why do not we ban the IRA? Why do we not ban demonstrations? Why do we not send constantly-demonstrating students away from universities?
We in this House know the answer, more or less. We know that to ban the IRA might simply lead to its re-emergence under 100 successive different names. We know, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes) wrote in the Daily Telegraph recently, that there are security aspects of the decision whether to ban the IRA. It is important that we should explain to our constituents why we do not do what it seems obvious to them should be done. We know that to ban demonstrations would, first, be to eliminate a basic right and, secondly, might create violence instead of containing it. In explaining this problem to our constituents we need to explain that the disciplining of students on the university campus is for the university authorities, not for us.
If we are to retain the freedom of our society, we in this House must try to understand the many forces at work, the excessive permissiveness in some schools which has led to lack of self-discipline, the attitudes and the management at some secondary schools, the deliberate subversion that goes on at some schools, the exploitation and glamorisation of violence in many films and on television, and the licensed obscenities permitted, very wrongly, some years ago by the BBC. I am reminded of the poignant words of Caliban to Prospero:
You taught me language and my profit on't is I know how to curse.
That seems, alas, appropriate to some of our school children. Behind all these manifestations there is a mindless fashion for revolution.
But we in this House have our share of responsibility, too, for the climate. I believe there is a parallel between our economic and our moral and political


problems. Just as there has been and is money inflation, so also we have contributed to bringing about expectation inflation, rights inflation and laws inflation. Neither party has been blameless. We have built up expectations and frustrated them. Socialist in particular have stressed rights.
It was not always so. As I understand it, original members of the Labour Party, emphasised the need to balance rights and duties as we Conservatives try to do; for rights have no meaning unless they are balanced by duties. But members of the Labour Party have prated of rights without ensuring that rights can be satisfied. They have peddled instant reform, often of age-old ills, and have failed. Many of those who orate about rights, then pass legislation which prevents rights from being exercised. So there is plenty of material for to exploit. Against this background the far Left and other extremists clamour their slogans and abuse the rights of free speech.

Mr. Bob Cryer: What about the far Right?

Sir K. Joseph: I am coming to the far Right. I do not think I am taking long to cover a great deal of ground.
The extremists claim that the imperfections of society justify anti-social behaviour and violence, but which society in this world is perfect? Which society does not contain injustices, and what have those who demonstrate most of the time done to make things better? Often those most strident in demanding rights contribute least to the pool of resources from which rights can be honoured.
Here is this country there is freedom and scope to try to make improvements. Yes, imperfect this society is, but free and with mechanism for change. Against this background the least politicians can do is to set an example of scrupulous respect for the law. I do not believe all Members of Her Majesty's present Government have shown that scrupulous respect. I have warned the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Foot) that I felt it inevitable that in this debate I should refer to his remarks about a member of the judiciary. It is ironic that the right hon. Gentleman, who could spon-

taneously, without any preparation, make a long and accurate speech about the struggle for judicial independence in the seventeenth century should so violate that independence by his words in this House recently. One must also refer to the behavious of the Lord President of the Council when he was in Opposition, in connection with the Clay Cross councillors, behaviour which I believe, to their credit, deeply embarrassed some of his colleagues in the present Government.
Next, there is the Home Secretary himself. I am not wishing to exaggerate at all. He is often robust in words and often in deeds; but he has made his contribution to the bad examples. On illegal immigration, on spouses for immigrant women, on which he has changed his mind on the risks of abuse, on Chilean permits, he has taken decisions with some reason I readily accept, but decisions which will attract most support from the Left at the expense perhaps of later damage to the people of this country, including the immigrant communities themselves.
The bulk of the people of this country look to successive Governments to guard a small number of certitudes—the rule of law, national identity, the value of the currency and freedom from fear. On all of these they have legitimate complaints, and we no doubt have answers. But to many of our constituents it looks as if the far Left, with its hatred of free society, have had it all their own way.

Mr. Charles Loughlin: What about the far Right, the National Front?

Sir K. Joseph: Take the hooligans who control the National Union of Students. They ban free speech. Some universities, honourably, have renounced them. Some Ministers—the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for Education and the right hon. Lady the Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection—have denounced them. What have the National Union of Students now done? They have condescended to forgo violence but not to allow speakers of whom they disapprove to be heard.
The totalitarian antics of the far left, if not firmly handled by the Government of the day, produce a reaction in the far Right. I am a member of a minority


with every reason to abominate the attitudes of the National Front. But I warn the House that if the excesses of the far Left are not curbed—of course, within the rule of law—we fuel the National Front; and the tragedy of that movement is that it contains not only some very nasty people but also some frustrated decent people, too, many of them trade unionists who see the far Left in action every day.

Mr. John Lee: The right hon. Gentleman is no doubt trying to be fair and is itemising a large number of sources of violence and disrespect for the law but he has not said a word about the Rhodesia situation, which is one of the gravest breaches of the law.

Sir K. Joseph: One could speak of Rhodesia, South Africa, Russia, Chile, but these are not our responsibility. In this debate we are discussing the safety of the public and respect for the law in this country.
Finally, I turn to the subject of terrorism. In a free society it is difficult to stop the bomber. Plainly, the strength of the police is all-important, as is its intelligence service and the co-operation of overseas services.
Alas, terrorism is not a new experience since we have behind us years of the misery of Northern Ireland. In connection with Northern Ireland, there is an enormous political dimension to be taken into account when considering terrorism.
There seems to be a widespread feeling in the country that for terrorism there should be the death penalty. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] There are three main questions or clusters of questions that should be asked. First, is the death penalty thinkable for terrorism? Two reasons are generally advanced for the use of the death penalty. One is that it marks society's abhorrence of a particular outrage. We frustrate the public in a legitimate reaction if we forget or ignore this strand of the argument.
The second reason is to deter. So far the subject of whether there should or should not be the death penalty normally has been considered only in connection with murder. In that connection I am against capital punishment. I am an abolitionist, because I have never been

convinced so far that capital punishment would be a deterrent to murder. If were so convinced, I would change my vote.
Murder is an act of violence against a person. In most cases murder is unplanned; in most cases it is the result of hot blood; in many cases it is carried out on a relative or friend.

Mr. James Kilfedder: Does not my right hon. Friend agree that terrorist acts, such as the bomb on the plane from Belfast, are random attempts at mass murder? Does my right hon. Friend think that since there is the death penalty for arson in the Royal Dockyards and piracy on the high seas, it is possible to contemplate having the death penalty for terrorists who are prepared to engage in mass murder?

Sir K. Joseph: I shall pick up my hon. Friend's argument a little later. I was saying that most murders are unplanned, most are in hot blood, and many involve family or friends. The House tried on one occasion to distinguish between different types of murder. We tried to catch the systematic, near-deliberate or deliberate murderer in the Homicide Act 1957, but the classification broke down.
I believe that quite different considerations from those appropriate to murder apply to terrorism. Terrorism is deliberate. A terrorist systematically equips himself to do indiscriminate destruction to life and limb. Terrorism is an act of indiscriminate violence on the State, through an unknown number of persons. It is an act of war in time of peace.
The decision on the penalty is for individual Members of Parliament—as, in the ultimate are all decisions. I can only say, as a long-standing and still convinced opponent of capital punishment for murder, that I regard the death penalty for terrorism as a totally different question. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I cannot speak for others. I am confident that there will be different opinions among abolitionists, but it seems to me that that is the first question.
Secondly, there is a highly specialised cluster of questions, which I shall not presume to try to answer, involving the definition and scope of capital punishment for terrorism. I understand that the Republic of Ireland introduced a


definition in 1964 in its Criminal Justice Act. There are difficult questions involving the prerogative of mercy. These questions are not for me, but I refer to them for completeness.
Thirdly, and most difficult, is the following question. If capital punishment for terrorism is thinkable, and if it is definable, would it be in the public interest to introduce it? On the one hand, it would mark the sense of outrage which the country feels for such episodes as occurred at the White Tower. Perhaps it might deter some terrorists, and there are people who claim that the experience in 1938, when two executions led to the end of terrorism at that time, gives us some encouragement. On the other hand, there is the risk, as the Home Secretary has rightly emphasised, that the result of introducing capital punishment would be to escalate violence and would be an encouragement to the taking of hostages—in other words, that it would not deter terrorists who in many cases are obsessed enough to want to be martyrs. I would however remind the Home Secretary that there were hostages taken at Munich when no death penalty was involved but merely imprisonment.
There is also the difficult question for us to judge of how sympathy moves between crime and punishment. The newspapers recently have been full of haunting pictures of crippled children. What happens six months afterwards when the terrorist is caught, is tried and has appealed? What happens if the haunting pictures that then appear are of the terrorist himself or herself or of his or her family? We cannot tell where sympathy will lie. For today I only list some of the factors.
This is an important question of great interest to the public. I can only say, to bring the matter down to earth, that it is all an academic question because terrorists first have to be caught. That is difficult enough, and then there is the whole process of law and appeal. For my right hon. and hon. Friends, I can say that, whatever our views as individuals, it seems to us that we must approach the question with open minds. My right hon. Friends and I in office will study the implications of staying as we are or of changing.
My hon. Friends who want to make a change should not underestimate the difficult judgment as to where the public interest truly lies. The Home Secretary has said that in his view the public interest lies against capital punishment for terrorism. That is his conviction. My inclination is to agree with him personally that many terrorists would not be deterred. But that does not end the question. Even the Home Secretary's view is not enough when the country is faced with questions such as that. The House will want to know whether the Government have a view on this important matter. I hope the Home Secretary will give us the Government's view. We owe it to the public to consider thoroughly a point of view held by large numbers of people in the country and they should be told what is the Government's view.
I apologise if I have gone rather quickly through an immense range of subjects.

Mr. George Cunningham: The right hon. Gentleman has not proposed anything.

Sir K. Joseph: I have tried to set the background for the debate. The House will listen with great care to the Home Secretary's reply on the several worrying subjects covered by this important debate.

4.49 p.m.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Roy Jenkins): I welcome the debate, and I also welcome the major part of the remarks made by the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) and the tone in which he opened the debate. His speech at times was on a philosophical, almost remote, note but, none the less, he raised our thoughts to some broad considerations.
One minor reason for welcoming the debate is that it so happens that it gives me my first, perhaps my only, opportunity in this Parliament to make a speech. Nothing should be read into the fact that I suggest that it may be my only opportunity. I refer only to the fact that on many occasions I have made statements and have given answers to Private Notice Questions, but this is the only occasion on which I have made a speech of any substance.
That being so, before returning to the issue which the right hon. Gentleman raised in the latter part of his speech, perhaps I may begin by endeavouring to refute some of the more unnecessarily and unconvincingly controversial parts of his speech. I deplore any acts of violence and any violent demonstrations by the Left or by the Right. I thought that the right hon. Gentleman made a mistake in suggesting the whole time that it was the Left who were provoking the Right. The extreme Right can act in very provocative ways, and I do not believe that on reflection the right hon. Gentleman would wish to deny that.
The right hon. Gentleman then produced an extraordinary catalogue of reasons why he thought that I had flirted with illegality—I am not sure that that was his phrase, but I am sure that it was his intention. He listed three examples. The first was the amnesty. The amnesty was designed to repair a bit of retrospective legislation. I believe that retrospective legislation is fundamentally undesirable and at variance with the principles of the law, and we have heard enough about it from the Conservative benches in the recent past.
Secondly, and still more surprisingly, the right hon. Gentleman suggested that my decision to admit husbands in the same way as wives have been admitted so far was in some extraordinary way an illegal act. As he welcomed it when I announced it, I do not know what thoughts have gone on in his mind since. Whether the decision is welcome or not, there is manifestly not a trace of illegality about it. It is merely exercising the right which rests upon all Home Secretaries to make changes in our immigration laws. They have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future.

Sir Keith Joseph: Certainly it was not illegal. I was trying to bring out the fact that the right hon. Gentleman had seen great risks of abuse when he first came to office and that he had decided to ignore them in making the change.

Mr. Jenkins: That does not begin to add up to the argument which the right hon. Gentleman was endeavouring to propound.
To complete dealing with the right hon. Gentleman's catalogue of examples,

the third was that I had adopted a more generous attitude towards Chilean refugees. One of the best and oldest traditions of this country is the admission of those who are, or are likely to be, the victims of political oppression. If to continue that tradition is to act in an illegal way, words have lost their meaning.

Mr. George Cunningham: Disraeli would have done it.

Mr. Jenkins: More important than these controversial exchanges, and certainly more important than the fact that this debate gives me the opportunity to make my first speech in this Parliament, is that it is right that we should debate matters which cause, as they do, widespread public concern. Recently we have witnessed several further bomb incidents of the kind that we experienced in 1973 and in early 1974, leading to loss of life, serious injury and physical destruction, as well as some escapes from threats which perhaps were achieved by a mixture of skill and luck. I shall deal with the point which the right hon. Gentleman made at the end of his speech. However, I do not think that these terrorist threats or attacks provide any evidence of a general decline in respect for the law. On the contrary, the deep-seated and almost universal revulsion felt against those who engage in such attacks fortifies the appreciation by ordinary citizens of how essential is the rule of law to the preservation of our liberties and safety and how great is our dependence upon those services which endeavour often in very difficult circumstances to uphold them or to repair the damage when it is breached. The police and other services engaged in this task have, and will continue to have, my full support.
I should be more dismayed were there any sign that the people of this country accepted the recent outrages with indifference or reacted by believing that we should respond to the bombings by acceding to the political demands of those who use violence. Then it might be possible to argue that terrorist attacks represented a general deterioration in respect for the law. But that is far from being the case.
There is the separate but related issue, at least as far as this debate is concerned, of the long-term growth in what, for this purpose, may be described as non-politically-motivated crime. That has been with


us for at least 20 years now. But its familiarity is not the slightest reason for complacency. However it is a reason for debating these matters without partisanship and without the delusion that the denunciation of crime or the proclamation of a tough law and order approach is the same as its solution.
I seem to recollect that at the famous—or notorious—Selsdon Park conference in 1970 law and order was made into one of the two main issues. I regret, however, that its elevation led to no change of trend. I wish it were otherwise. By 1972 recorded crime was up by 17 per cent over 1969. Violent offences against the person were up by 38 per cent. Robbery was up by 48 per cent. In 1973 there was the most welcome relief in the total of recorded crime, though not in violent offences against the person. I regret, further, that this relief was concentrated into the first half of 1973 and that the last quarter showed an increase of 11 per cent. in indictable crimes over the figure in the last quarter of 1972.

Mr. Teddy Taylor: This remarkable fall of 0·3 per cent. has been announced four times already by the present Government and the previous Government. Can the Home Secretary relate to it the relevance of the footnote in page 13 of the Criminal Statistics, England and Wales, which explains that, due to a change in recording practice, offences of theft under £5 are excluded from the figures recorded as being known to the police? Can he say how this relates to the previous year's figures?

Mr. Jenkins: I am afraid that the simple answer is "No". If the hon. Gentleman cares to put down a Written Question—and there is still time for a priority Question—I shall answer it. He will be aware that I was endeavouring to give a general picture and that I made reference to the welcome change in the first half of 1973 so as not to overstate my case that there had been no change of trend following 1970. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman's interruption was relevant.
If there has been a decline in respect for the law, whether measured by these general figures or by terrorist crimes, of which the two worst in terms of loss of

life occurred in February 1972 and in February of this year, certainly it did not start on 4th March 1974. I say that so that we may approach this difficult subject in a suitable spirit of non-partisanship and without any claim to omniscience in any quarter of the House. No one has the basis for any such claim.
There are those who believe that a return to capital punishment would solve a large part of our troubles or at any rate assuage a large part of our feelings. I shall deal first with the general point, and then I shall take up in more detail what the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East said about its specific terrorist application, which, in view of his speech and in view of the current position, is the one which attracts most attention today.
As far as I am aware, no one suggests that in relation to crime generally capital punishment should be used, except for murder. On the most recent attempt to re-initiate it—notably the Ten-Minute Rule Bill which the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Taylor) moved about 15 months ago and to which I replied—there was an attempt to differentiate largely along the lines of the Homicide Act 1957, unsatisfactory though that proved to be from almost any point of view.
The fact is, however, that of all major crimes, murder has proved the least subject to increase. In 1957, the last year of full capital punishment, the number of murders known to the police was 3·0 per million of the population in England and Wales. In 1964, the last effective year of the Homicide Act, it was 2·9 per million. In 1972 it was again 3·0 per million. There is no evidence from those figures of a unique deterrent effect.
I note in passing that just as I have to deal with some demands for the reintroduction of the death penalty, I also have to deal with a number of instances in which there is alleged uncertainty whether some convicted of murder, including two who were hanged, should have been so convicted. This confirms my view, particularly as there is no unique or necessary deterrent evidence, that the penalty is too final to be controlled by the frailty of human judgment.
I turn to the question whether different considerations should apply to terrorist offences. Since the exchanges in the


House a week ago today, I have gone over in my mind most carefully whether in the present horrible and menacing circumstances capital punishment would in any way help to protect us from such a terrible incident as that which occurred at the Tower of London last Wednesday. I am fully aware of the strength of public reaction against that atrocity. I probably feel it at least as strongly as most people for I had the experience of seeing the victims in hospital. If I were convinced that it would so protect us, I believe that it would be my duty to set aside my deep-seated repugnance for the penalty. But I do not begin to be so convinced.
Let me say at once that my judgment is based upon no shred of sympathy for the perpetrators of such outrages. I shall put it with brutal frankness. If one or more of them were to be blown up by their own bombs I would think it a just end. I have no desire to preserve the lives of those who wantonly and ruthlessly sacrifice the lives of others. But I am sure that those who advocate capital punishment—maybe they do so from the best motives—make two errors. First, they fail to allow for the long passage of time which is inevitable in the process of judicial killing, and that public sympathy can be very fickle. The public see the present but not the future. Second, I believe—although none of us can speak with certainty on this matter—that they misunderstand the psychology, or the psychosis, and motivation of fanatical terrorism.
I am strongly fortified in my belief by having re-read in the course of my consideration what happened in this House on 14th May 1973. On that occasion the right hon. Member for Penrith and the Border (Mr. Whitelaw), who is widely respected in the House, moved a clause to abolish capital punishment in Northern Ireland where until then it had existed. I ask the House to note the date. The right hon. Gentleman did so after one of the worst atrocities in this country—namely, the Aldershot Officers' Mess Explosion—and after a period during which nearly 800 people had been killed in Northern Ireland, including more than 200 members of the security forces. It was also nearly two months after the bomb attacks at the Old Bailey and elsewhere in London.
I also ask the House to note the background and the previous views of the right hon. Gentleman. He had not been an abolitionist. In 1969, when the five-year experiment came to an end and the House had to vote whether it should be made permanent, the right hon. Gentleman voted for retention—

Mr. Patrick Cormack: rose—

Mr. Jenkins: I shall complete this argument and then I shall give way. The right hon. Member for Penrith and the Border is a man with perhaps more direct experience of terrorism on the spot than almost any other hon. Member. On that occasion he said:
… I have experienced at first hand the sort of emotional reactions which particular events provoke in Northern Ireland. I am therefore absolutely convinced, as a result of that experience, that in the days immediately before and after any proposed execution the police and the soldiers would be at increased risk.
In relation to this country I would add that that applies to the civilians as well. The right hon. Gentleman continued:
As a result, the effort to protect the lives of policemen and soldiers by making an example in the case of death which cannot be reprieved would be likely to provoke more shooting and more risk of death than to reduce it.
I cannot claim any greater wisdom than any other Member of the House on this point, and, of course, I may be wrong. I can only plead that Irish history is on my side and that the creation of martyrs in Ireland has certainly not helped to protect the lives of those trying to enforce law and order.
For all these reasons I have come to the conclusion, despite what I know to be the feelings of many people, that far from there being a particular reason for keeping the death penalty in Northern Ireland when it is abolished in the rest of the United Kingdom, the arguments are entirely the other way."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 14th May 1973; Vol. 856, c. 1029–1030.]
I regard that as a most powerful and entirely non-doctrinaire argument. If it were right to abolish the death penalty in relation to terrorists in Northern Ireland in 1973, it could hardly be sensible to reintroduce it here in relation to the same offence in 1974.

Mr. Cormack: I was one of those who not only supported my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and the Border (Mr. Whitelaw) but who spoke in the 1973 debate along the same lines. But there is


a great degree of difference between taking one part of the United Kingdom and treating it uniquely and separately and treating the United Kingdom as a whole. The events that have happened over the last 14 months have made many of us, who sincerely supported my right hon. Friend in May 1973, think again and wonder whether it might be right to consider, as I said to the Secretary of State last week, calmly and quietly and over a period whether the time has come for a change.

Mr. Jenkins: I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman held his views sincerely in 1973 and holds his different views equally sincerely today. I would not challenge that for a moment. What seems clear. and the point to which his right hon. Friend was addressing his mind then with his considerable experience, was not whether it was sensible to have a different penalty in one part of the United Kingdom than in another but the direct issue with which we are now confronted—namely, whether the death penalty would help to make people safer or put them in more danger in conditions of terrorist attack.

Mr. Carol Mather: rose—

Mr. Jenkins: I would ask the House to note the point that I have made about martyrs. That is a point which was also used by the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East. Terrorists love martyrs. When faced with a most ruthless enemy, as we certainly are with terrorists, I believe that there is a great deal to be said for not doing what he wants. I believe that if we were to restore the death penalty here it would be regarded not as a defeat or a deterrent but as a victory by the IRA terrorists. I am not going to have a hand in doing that.
What are the other methods by which we can combat the IRA? Two are frequently canvassed. First, why not ban the IRA? Secondly, why not erect passport or other controls within the common travel area?
I should stress that, in my view, the erection of such controls, which I will consider later, would involve controls between the two islands, not between the United Kingdom as a whole and the Republic of Ireland. It would have to be control between the two islands,

splitting the common travel area. Both those measures were steadily rejected by the previous Government. I keep an open mind about them. So far I have maintained the previous position, partly because this has remained the advice of the chief officers of police and those most directly concerned with security matters. They believe—I see great force in this belief—that a ban would merely turn the IRA into fragmented underground organisations, still more difficult to deal with, and that travel control would not help at all.

Mr. Mather: Before the right hon. Gentleman leaves that point, may I ask whether he agrees that it is not necessary to insist upon passports or travel documents from the North or the South of Ireland? All that needs to be done to control people is to insist on the filling in of embarkation cards from Dublin or Belfast. This was done between Belfast and Gatwick for a period of months, and it worked extremely effectively.

Mr. Jenkins: I do not know exactly on what the hon. Gentleman bases his view that it worked extremely effectively. I do not know whether he has any evidence to support that view. I am genuinely asking in a spirit of inquiry. I am sure that it worked in that people filled in the cards and that they were collected. But we need more evidence to show that it worked effectively. I agree that a variety of possible methods of control could be imposed.
The police have recently substantially increased their degree of surveillance over movements between the two islands, which I think is right in present circumstances. However, to impose restrictions which would have any meaningful impact would undoubtedly create considerable inconvenience for many innocent people. But that could be the price that we would have to pay.
If the considered view of the chief officers of police and those most concerned with dealing with these matters were to change, I do not think that in present circumstances I could or should reject that view without considering it very carefully and urgently, and I should certainly do that. But at present, on balance, and in view of the advice that I have received, I maintain the position


that was adopted steadily and consistently by the previous administration.
At this point I should like to add a word about the so-called Anti-Imperialist Festival, sometimes referred to as the Terrorist Conference, which has been taking place in Dublin and part of which is to take place in Belfast. I never had any intention of letting people come through this country to attend it. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Mrs. Knight), who is not here today, got very excited last week at Question Time because I told her that I had refused no visas. I had refused none because none had been applied for. It is difficult to refuse the non-existent. There was no question of granting any, or of allowing nationals of countries who do not require visas to come through this country for that specific purpose. Fourteen were turned back at Dover last weekend and early this week. Orders were given that no one was to be allowed in for this purpose without reference to Ministers. Of course, I cannot guarantee that some may not have got through by giving false purposes for their journeys. I am not aware of any. I think it likely that there might have been more had I given advance notice of what I was proposing to do, thus encouraging people to give false reasons for their journeys. Action is sometimes better than words.
I turn back for a few moments to the general crime position.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: Before my right hon. Friend leaves the question of terrorists, may I ask whether he is aware that my constituents and many others are very concerned about the vulnerability of oil installations? I am not asking for an answer today, but does he realise that no fewer than 11 Government Departments are involved? Bearing in mind the recent blowing up of a pipeline in my constituency, may I ask whether he will undertake to ensure that some of the best minds in the Home Office and the Scottish Office turn their attention to the urgent issues involved?

Mr. Jenkins: I assure my hon. Friend that I am aware of the specific problem to which he referred and to the incidents which have taken place, particularly the one in his constituency. Certainly everything that can be done by way of security

measures will be applied to the problem to which he has rightly drawn attention.
I turn back for a few moments to the general crime position. My view is that the best deterrents are the likelihood of detection and, when detection has taken place, of conviction. Fearsome punishments are certainly not effective if the offender thinks that he will get away with it and not be caught, let alone convicted.
Detection depends greatly on the strength, morale and efficiency of the police. Strength is not as yet as we would like it to be, particularly in the metropolis and in two or three other areas, but it is over 20 per cent. up on when I was previously Home Secretary. I take no credit for that. It happened mostly under the previous Government. But the police have just had a well-received pay settlement which has been directed particularly to the problem of constables with three to six years' service and to maintaining people in the police. Indeed, there is evidence that wastage, which has been strong for a little time, particularly in the metropolitan area, is at least flattening out. That is a slight improvement of the trend. I think that we are maintaining morale, and I certainly propose to do everything that I can to maintain it.
Efficiency is, to a considerable extent, a matter of technical equipment, though of training as well. We have seen a revolution here in the past eight years, with which I can claim to have had a little to do. When I became Home Secretary at the end of 1965 the pocket radio was a rarity and cars were largely confined to those on traffic patrol duties. We introduced a massive programme of equipment, which has since borne substantial fruit. The pocket radio in particular, now almost universal, has made a vast difference.
On convictions, perhaps I might remind the House of the history of majority jury verdicts in criminal cases which now attract practically no criticism and, over five years, account for about 8 per cent. of those found guilty on indictment of criminal charges. I am informed that that 8 per cent. includes many of the worst and most professional criminals.
Majority verdicts were proposed in the Criminal Justice Bill 1967. When we started out, the proposal attracted a lot of Conservative support. As we went on,


most of it fell away, with the strong exception of the noble Lord, Lord Hailsham, who was then the right hon. Member for St. Marylebone. He was staunch to the end. But in the crucial Division on Report he was able to take only 23 Conservative Members into the Aye Lobby with him. The right hon. and learned Member for Epsom and Ewell (Sir P. Rawlinson) was a leading opponent and so were such notable and occasionally noisy upholders of law and order as the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mr. Biggs-Davison) and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston. The right hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes) was a teller for the Noes.
I believe that on that occasion against a great deal of opposition—which those concerned no doubt felt was well-founded—we struck a greater blow for the conviction of the guilty than in almost any other recent measure. Without it a number of convictions of IRA terrorists might not have been secured.
Therefore, my approach to crime and terrorism has not been, is not, and will not be a soft one, but it will, I hope, be a rational one. Let us express our detestation of the acts of terrorism to which the country has been subjected. Let us recognise how dependent we are upon the protection and the efficiency of the police and the intelligence that they are able to uncover. Let us strive in every possible way to preserve the security of our people and buildings, but let us do so on the basis of properly argued and well-thought-out measures, not merely on emotional surges and generalised statements.

5.21 p.m.

Sir Peter Rawlinson: There are two matters upon which I very much agree with what the Home Secretary has said. First, nobody should show any omniscience about the problems we are discussing, and secondly, there is, as the Home Secretary admits, widespread public concern over the state of the law, the administration of the law, and the attacks upon society which are so general nowadays.
With regard to the first matter concerning Irish terrorism, at the time that I was Attorney-General for Northern Ireland I supported my right hon. Friend

the Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Whitelaw). At that time, in May 1973, there was much that my right hon. Friend and others were seeking to do in Ireland. There was this distinction between the law in Northern Ireland, and the law in England and Wales, and everything pointed at that time to doing that which my right hon. Friend did, and upon which we supported him. But the situation may have changed. The situation now is such that with all those initiatives having failed, we are approaching what is in my judgment—though the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland may feel that they know better—a mobilisation of forces in Northern Ireland directed against Northern Ireland and against this country which may—I put it no higher—call for a complete rethink about the death penalty.
The Home Secretary's most valid point is about creating the martyr. That is a point which no one who has proposals to make affecting such matters can put aside lightly. It is a great matter of judgment whether one creates the martyr after the due processes of law have been observed under which a person is convicted of terrorism and suffers the death penalty. Does that create a martyr? Would such action create the sort of situation there was in 1916–17 and in 1921–22? Such a situation could be created.
But are we gaining much at present without having the death penalty? Is there not martyrdom in cases such as that of the Price sisters? They have created an aura of martyrdom. I remind the Home Secretary and the House that they did not go before a court and say that they did not recognise it and that they were patriots for Ireland. They went before the court and pleaded not guilty. They pretended that they had come to this country—they swore this on oath—to see the sights, including Buckingham Palace. They made allegations against police officers, of evidence having been planted, in order to discredit the officers. They did not show any noble signs of patriotism for Ireland, but simply tried to escape the consequences of what they did. Did they, in that attitude, make themselves into martyrs?
I fully accept the vaildity of the Home Secretary's point but a situation may have


now developed in which we must say, "Martyr or no, there is only so much that we tolerate and we can go no further." There is a time when the public, in their emotional reaction, may know best. For we in this House are not the cleverest men in England nor do we always know best.
If the feeling of the country is basically that we must grasp the problem of men who devote their lives to, and are prepared to face death in, the use of explosives and by taking part in bombing and murders, then we must deal with it. It may indeed be felt that the State should be able to say to people who engage in terrorism that if they commit murder in the course of such actions they must die.
I had anxiety in the past about capital punishment and what might happen when it was removed. I thought about the risk of the increased use of firearms and explosives. My concern was not so much an increase in murders as an increase in the crimes of violence involving the use of firearms. But as the Home Secretary has pointed out, it is remarkable how wrong one can be.
I have found how wrong I was about juries. I do not pretend that I was right. He was right—I give that to him. He did a good service for the administration of justice in bringing forward the idea of majority verdicts. It alienated me when I thought about losing the principle of unanimity in serious cases. The right hon. Gentleman has rightly demonstrated that his idea was correct. He was justified in his belief. In many of the more serious crimes convictions are reached on a majority basis.
Anyone who approaches the problems which we are discussing—whoever he may be, whatever his experience—should do so with a humble attitude. We should not have a fixed idea that we are right, and we should not despise the genuine opinion of our constituents, who feel deeply about these matters.
I believe, although I do not think that the Home Secretary accepts this, that there has been a decline in the respect for the law. That decline relates not only to the administration of the law but also to the manner of making the law, the procedures adopted in this House.

We in this House must accept considerable responsibility for the lack of respect, or the decline in respect, for the law. There is much which goes on in the House which creates disillusion and contempt about how the legislators, the makers of the law, proceed about their business.
We have had shouting matches across the Floor of the House. I have had my share of being shouted at. Many hon. Members, particularly those who have had Government responsibility, have had similar experiences. The House should not continue to proceed in this way. I now find myself a convert in favour of having television cameras in the House. If we had the cameras in I do not believe that the parliamentary thug or the parliamentary boor would be tolerated. Such Members do much to destroy the reputation of Parliament.
Therefore, I do believe that there has been a decline in the administration of the law. I do not instance just the Industrial Relations Act, the National Industrial Relations Court and the unions, although they have given a pointer. The unions have shown people who have to pay rates or taxes or who may be opposed to nationalisation how to go about it. They have given a lead. It is a dangerous and desperate lead. That is something which now may be in the past, but the decline in the respect for the law is due in great degree to conduct in this present Parliament and in those which immediately preceded it. I hope that there will be a change in Parliament in the manner of making of law which will thereby increase the actual obedience to the law.

5.31 p.m.

Mr. Charles Loughlin: I am glad that the Secretary of State said that there had been an increase in the morale of the police, particularly because of the pay settlement. But I hope that he will have a close look at the complaints of the Police Federation about the procedures for disciplinary action. The federation seems to complain that one of the new problems among the police is that when they submit an appeal to the Home Secretary on behalf of a constable, there are far too few oral hearings and the Home Secretary often refuses, as he has a right to do, to take into account evidence that was not


available at the disciplinary hearing before the chief constable.
The right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) seemed to be trying to convey that because we have a respect for law and order we should give up our critical faculties. That would be completely wrong. We should all be doing the nation a disservice unless we took a careful approach to the police force. In the past, the police have rightly enjoyed a reputation par excellence. Today, they are having to do an increasingly difficult job. No one who has seen demonstrations can doubt that. It is not always the Left who demonstrate. It was a tragedy that a demonstration by the National Front was allowed to coincide with a Left-wing demonstration in the same area. Such arrangements impose an impossible burden on the ordinary policeman on the beat.
There is a problem with demonstrations both by the Right and by the Left. The right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East did a disservice to this country by constantly emphasising that it was the Left whose demonstrations were unruly or violent. Demonstrations have been a feature of our way of life over the centuries and in many instances have achieved an objective which could have been achieved in no other way. We should be guardians of the rights of the individual to demonstrate in the proper way. We should be careful. I do not suggest that people exercising their democratic right to demonstrate should be allowed to do things which they could not normally do within the law. We have to strike a balance and to be certain to safeguard the right of people to demonstrate within the law.
One of the things that worry me—I pay absolute tribute to the police as a whole—is the increasing number of complaints that one receives about their conduct in many parts of the country. It would be unreal to imagine that 99·9 per cent. of the police were saints. There is bound to be one rotten apple in one barrel out of 10. But there are far too many complaints. If we are to establish confidence between the ordinary citizen and the police we should look carefully at these complaints and the procedures for

investigating and determining them. Nothing is more likely to undermine people's confidence in the police than the present situation in which the police are the judge and jury in any complaint against a policeman.
I repeat and underline that it is a minority of policemen of whom I am talking. Like most other hon. Members, I have dealt with a whole series of allegations of police misconduct, and I do so in a number of ways. I sometimes send them to the superintendent of the area concerned. I sometimes send them to the Home Office, examine the reply I get and write back to the complainant to give him the reply and to say that I consider the case closed.
But some cases I pursue, solely because I believe, after investigation, that the character of the person for whom I am acting has been established and that there is reasonable doubt about the correctness of the police conduct. As an illustration, I recently raised in the House an example of the failure of investigative machinery to deal with complaints. The case concerned a man who was alleged to have been beaten up by two plainclothes constables on the streets of Bristol. When they got to the police station the sergeant refused to charge the man, who was alleged to have been drunk and disorderly. The man was eventually charged after I had raised the matter with the chief constable.
On the occasion on which I had to raise this matter as a breach of privilege I had to name the Chief Constable of Avon and Somerset. I had to do that because of a change caused by the local government reorganisation which affected police administration. On that occasion I did not have the opportunity of explaining why I had to do that. However, the chief constable who was responsible was not the Chief Constable of Avon and Somerset. because the action had occurred prior to the changeover. It was the Chief Constable of Gloucestershire who was responsible when the incident occurred.
I have now come to the conclusion that it is dangerous for Members of Parliament to raise matters involving complaints against the police until such time as it is virtually impossible for the police to take action in the courts, because I am


now convinced that it is not in the interests of his constituent for a Member of Parliament to raise cases of this kind. One knows the period that had elapsed between the incident and my raising of it. It was five weeks after the incident and about two weeks after I had raised the matter with the Home Secretary before the summons was issued. This was a matter in which, normally, automatically a summons is issued at the time of the charge. I claimed that there had been some deliberate attempt to interfere with the activities of a Member of Parliament in that particular case.
I received a letter from the Home Office eventually. There were so many contradictions in it that it defied credulity. First, the sergeant went off duty sick. He was off duty for 10 days. Then he decided to refer the case to a superior officer. The chief superintendent in charge of the division was on leave. His deputy decided to wait until he returned. The whole matter went on.
It is true that the summons was issued after I had raised the matter with the Home Office, but allegedly before the Home Office had written to Bristol—although not necessarily before someone at the Home Office had telephoned Bristol and raised the matter. I mention that because I should like my hon. Friend the Minister of State to ask the Home Secretary to have a look at the duty rosters—as I suggested to the Minister of State who is not a Member of this House—to establish whether in fact the sergeant was off duty during that period and whether the superintendent was on holiday at that period.
It is the police who investigate complaints against themselves. That is where there is a failure. When a complaint is made against the police, there ought to be some machinery in which there is an element of independent investigation. I have yet to know of a case in which the complainants were satisfied about the method of investigation. At present the investigator is usually a superintendent from the local constabulary, and no one else assists him. In the particular case I have mentioned there was bitter resentment of the way in which Superintendent Challis conducted the interview, and it gives me great cause for concern. He

was abusive and sarcastic, and he made out that it was a trivial matter.
It is a nonsense that investigations are conducted in this way. In a procedure where the results of the investigation are sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions, it is essential that there is some independent element in the investigation. Perhaps the Minister will be able to tell me in how many cases the DPP has instructed prosecutions where complaints have been made, the investigation has been conducted by the local police and the papers have been sent to the DPP. There is a feeling that no matter what happens concerning the complaints procedure, even if the papers go to the DPP, nothing subsequently happens because the DPP always says that there is not sufficient evidence to deal with the matter.
I have used the particular case at Ravenhill to illustrate the difficulties of trying to establish in the mind of the public that there is fairness in the investigation of any complaint against the police. I have used this opportunity to raise this aspect of the problem because it is an important aspect of the whole debate. We shall be having an increasing number of incidents, particularly at demonstrations, if there is not the recognition, first, that all policemen are not perfect and, second, that we have to inculcate into the mind of the public that there is absolute fairness between themselves and the police. It is as important to establish confidence in the police force so that people know that if they have a complaint against the police they will get justice as it is to look at the various aspects of terrorism or anything else.
I have dealt with what I consider to be a fairly important aspect of the problem. I reiterate what my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has said about the death penalty in relation to terrorism. The problem with the death penalty, for any crime, is its finality. One can never guarantee that an innocent man does not go to the gallows. It is only those of us who have suffered the death of someone very close to us who appreciate the suffering of the relatives of someone who has been judicially hanged for a murder that he did not commit, or even possibly did not commit. That is something that Conservative Members must take on board before they advocate the return of hanging.

5.50 p.m.

Mr. Christopher Mayhew: Like the Home Secretary, I am making a first speech, and having crossed the Floor I must be in the unique position of being able to state that the right hon. Gentleman's performance at the Dispatch Box is equally impressive whether viewed from in front or behind.
I begin by assuring the Home Secretary in his absence that his defence of his actions, for which he was criticised by the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph). on the amnesty for immigrants, on the entry of husbands of immigrants and on the Chilean refugees, was for any reasonable person wholly convincing, and I was surprised that the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East should have categorised in the same group of offences or suspected offences against respect for the law the actions which the Home Secretary took in these three instances.
I think there is a great deal of agreement on both sides of the House about the basic problem. From the bombing of innocent children at one extreme to the smashing of street lighting at the other, violence and vandalism are at an entirely unacceptable level in our society today. The newspapers headline the spectacular crimes, but which of us here has not quite recently had a deputation in our constituencies of angry and sometimes frightened council tenants protesting about hooliganism on their estates? Over the whole spectrum of offences of violence the facts and figures are very disturbing, and now there is this new and ugly phenomenon of politically-motivated violence.
It is hard to realise that this is new. It is difficult to reflect back now and think how free from violence our politics were until quite recently. Of course, we have always had in our lifetime—and before—ugly riots and demonstrations from time to time. I remember taking part in one before the war, a demonstration in which nearly a quarter of a million of us stood in the streets of the East End of London to prevent Sir Oswald Mosley's black-shirts from marching through and insulting the Jewish people who lived there. It was an ugly enough demonstration, and I sustained some minor damage myself. But at that time there was no concerted

physical attack upon the police. If there had been, the most extreme of the demonstrators would have been immensely shaken and shocked, and certainly would not have entertained any idea of pursuing their political convictions by bombing or by the use of firearms. I think that the right hon. Member for Leeds. North-East was in error here in an otherwise interesting speech.
He said that all the time political and ideological fanatics were growing more powerful, but he did not distinguish between two different things—the growth in the numbers of ideological fanatics, and the sharp downturn in their methods of political operation. I doubt very much whether there are more ideological fanatics in this country today than there were before the war. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the National Front, but to anyone who went through politics in the 1930s the National Front, though it could grow, is but a shadow of the Fascist menace which existed before the war. Equally, there were before the war a very large number of dedicated and active Stalinists, and they were more active then than their counterparts are today. There has been a growth not in the number of ideological fanatics but in the violence with which they pursue their aims, and, in the case of the IRA and the Arab terrorists, in the weapons which they use.
Large peaceful demonstrations such as we used to know have become far less common. Political objectives are pursued increasingly by demonstrations that are smaller, more vicious and more violent, and, of course, by hijacking, bombing, killing and injuring totally innocent people who have no connection with the political aim in view but who unfortunately happen to be on the spot at the time of the event. It may be that Ulster has rubbed off a bit on us in Britain, but this is an international phenomenon which we have to take with great seriousness. The first human reaction, which was so well expressed by the right hon. and learned Member for Epsom and Ewell (Sir P. Rawlinson), is to increase the penalties, to reintroduce capital punishment for certain selected types of murder.
If it could be shown that it would help to lessen these atrocious crimes, many of us would warmly agree. But


a careful examination of the facts shows—and here the Home Secretary produced statistics—that there is no evidence either that the abolition of capital punishment led to the increase in homicide since, or that the reintroduction of capital punishment would do anything to lessen it today. Quite apart from the convincing statistics quoted by the Home Secretary, there is, of course, the comparison between the increase in homicide, which is bad, with the increase in crimes of violence other than homicide which has been two, three or four times faster during this critical period. This is conclusive evidence against the introduction of capital punishment for terrorism or other actions of murder. Nor is there any evidence that countries which have retained capital punishment have fared any better than those which have abolished it.
It could be argued that terrorists are special, and we have heard some interesting statements on this from the Home Secretary and from the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East. It is certainly a very different kind of murder. It is murder that is not done on the spur of the moment or in a fit of rage. It is not done by someone who is mentally sick or, as so many murders are, by someone who will commit suicide afterwards. I believe it is therefore, in terms of justice, the most abominable kind of murder one can conceive, and in pure justice the case for capital punishment being reintroduced for it is very strong. I appreciate the Home Secretary's view that if a terrorist were found to have been blown up by his own bomb no one should shed a tear. That is of course true.
But we must ask what are the practical effects—and here I disagree with the right hon. and learned Member for Epsom and Ewell. He said there might be some deterrent effect, but I do not believe it. I believe this same fanaticism which prompts these criminals to their ghastly outrages makes them indifferent to their own fate. It makes them even glory in what they think to be a martyr's crown. Therefore, I cannot believe that this is an effective deterrent in any way for the terrorist type of murder.
As for its effects in other directions, there is no evidence that the execution

of terrorists lessens terrorism or prevents it growing. On the contrary, we have many examples in history of precisely the opposite. The execution of Connolly did not stop IRA terrorism. In the American Civil War the executed John Brown was a considerable service to the South simply by lying a-mouldering in his grave. He was a martyr. His execution did nothing to stop the killing.

Mr. Lee: I am following the how Gentleman's argument very closely. Does not he agree that there were some exceptions? Does not he agree that the execution of the German war criminals at Nuremberg was one of the factors which helped staunch, if not entirely exterminate, Nazism in the post-war period?

Mr. Mayhew: That takes me a little wide. Jurists are entitled to feel some doubts about the basis of jurisprudence on which that was done.
One argument for executing terrorists that is often put forward, but has not been heard in this debate, is that merely to imprison a terrorist is to create the ground for terrorist action directed at getting him released from prison. We have had examples recently. However, this is muddled thinking. If we determined to reintroduce capital punishment for terrorists, we should not have them executed on the spot. They would be given a trial, which would not be completed for some months. The incentive for their fellow terrorists to face death, which they do in any case, in order to release them from a term of imprisonment will be 10 times stronger to release them from the prospect of execution. Therefore that argument does not hold water.
If stiffer penalties are no way forward, what are the answers? I was glad to hear the Home Secretary give encouraging news about the reduction of wastage in the police. They are under-manned and over-worked, and anything that can be done in that direction is helpful. No doubt many technical advances can be made in counter-terrorist security operations. In the United States promising advances have been made in the techniques of anti-hijacking security. They seem to be working, but the difficulty of protecting the public against the kind of indiscriminate terror we have been experiencing recently speaks for itself.
Therefore, we come back to the basic matter, which is to identify and if possible remove the causes of crimes of violence. This is a dangerous line of argument, because it is easy to think that when one has found an explanation of a crime one has found an excuse for it. It is easy to move from one frame of mind to the other.
I remember some years ago being able to visit a number of prisons and borstals and what were then approved schools. Before meeting offenders I would read their file, on the front of which one could always read details of the offence. One would read that, for example, a young offender had waited for a dark and foggy night and had then savagely attacked an old lady and robbed her, and how in court he was wholly unrepentant, arrogant and showed no remorse. One felt enraged at such monstrous conduct.
Then one read the file from the beginning, and perhaps saw that there was a history of mental instability in the family, that the young man had no father and a totally uncaring mother, or that as a young boy he had been physically assaulted by a step-father. By the time one ended the file one would be feeling that the young man had suffered all those things and at the end had knocked down and robbed only one old woman. That is the danger when one starts looking at the causes of the terrible outrages that there have been.
However, such examination of the causes must be made, because we can clearly see that if we had understood some of these problems a little earlier we might have been able to avoid the atrocious acts that followed. Nothing can excuse the atrocities at Lod airport or Maalot, but it is possible to see the outlines of an explanation. When I first visited Palestinian refugee camps in the early 1950s they were obvious breeding grounds for future acts of vengeance. Any people, however peaceable, subjected to such injustice and humiliation and treated with such indifference by the outside world, are likely to produce a crop of emotionally scarred and ruthless terrorists. If the world had understood the problem better and had acted earlier, the horror of Black September might never have happened. Therefore, we must today try to identify and eradicate the causes of future violence in our society.
The right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East stated a whole number of danger points. He referred, for example, to excessive permissiveness in education and to the media. I believe that there are many danger points where action today could avoid violence tomorrow. For example, I would put racial discrimination in employment very high on the list of things which could be, so to speak, the Palestinian refugee camps of today in Britain—that is, the course of future violence.
At a different level, there are boring, inhuman, degrading work methods in some of our factories and lack of responsibility and power for the employees in our work places. There is also overcrowding in every form, not just in housing but in our classrooms, the streets, prisons and the wards of our special hospitals. This overcrowding constitutes another danger area where action now could avoid violence in the future.
I very much agree with what the right hon. and learned Member for Epsom and Ewell said. We in this House also have to set an example. We have not done too well recently by our own conduct in lessening the growing disrespect for law and authority. It would help a great deal if we could inject a little more vitality and relevance into our normal political processes. Fewer party games might help to establish a greater respect for law and authority.
Those are only a few of the fields in which action now could help to prevent violence tomorrow. I am sure that in the long run it is this constructive kind of action that will do most to overcome the appalling problem that faces us.

6.8 p.m.

Mr. Donald Stewart: The hon. Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Mayhew) went some way towards dealing with the problem. In my view, what we are dealing with is not a matter of deprived homes and a shortfall in recruitment to the police, important as they are.
The hon. Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Loughlin), in a speech critical of the police, said that we should accept that the force is not composed 99·9 per cent. of saints. Whoever thought it was? The police force is drawn from the general public and will not achieve that


percentage of saints until we, the general public, achieve it.
What we are dealing with is a climate. If anyone had forecast 20 or even 10 years ago the threat to public safety, the decline in the respect for law, which are now increasingly rampant, few would have believed that forecast. Fewer still would have believed that this climate would be accepted so passively and in some way dealt with so supinely by successive Governments.
We have brought this situation on ourselves. I believe that it can still be reversed. The so-called permissive society has done appalling damage and has been a factor in engineering this predicament. In debates in the past on attempts to reduce the shocking photographs outside cinemas in London—to take one quite small aspect of the problem—hon. Members have expressed their abhorrence of censorship, which is a worthy outlook. They have said that they are opposed to any censorship of books, films, television and stage plays, and so on. In certain areas no doubt in the past censorship has been overdone. But what these Members have been fighting for is not an extension of the frontiers of freedom; they have been acting unwittingly as the agents of the most base commercial greed.
I have often heard the Yorkshire expression, "Where there's muck there's brass". Purveyors of pornography have caught on to the fact that "where there's filth there's plenty of money", and people who assist them to sell their wares are not helping freedom but licensing human greed. The increasing attempts to bring Sunday trading and Sunday sport are made for exactly the same reason.
All this climate leads to the road to subversion of society. Some people of Right-wing persuasion talks about "Reds under the bed". No doubt a Communist régime would be repugnant to most, if not all, of us, but what is dangerous today is an element which does not seek to apply a Communist revolution—which would have some order, abhorrent though it might be—but which simply wants to pull down the pillars of society and to leave a vacuum of despair and distress.
When the religious basis of society is no longer in favour—I am sorry to say that that is the position today in this

country—no yardstick of morality any longer exists. There are some restraints on persons when they feel that they are accountable at the end of the day to a higher tribunal. The decay in the preservation of public order is a direct consequence of the advance of the humanist philosophy.
Governments here and elsewhere are weakly wringing their hands in face of terrorists dealing death to innocent people. For these crimes, at least, the reinstatement of the death penalty is essential. Twenty years ago, I was an abolitionist, but I have come to see that society must take steps to defend itself. Furthermore, our police forces are entitled to this protection. They do not always get, I am sorry to say, from Governments, sometimes the public and sometimes even the courts, the support they should be able to look for in these times.
Had West Germany and Israel not abolished the death penalty, they might have escaped the disasters of Munich and Maalot, which follows the arrest and conviction of other terrorists. Had the latter been executed after their trial, at least the new atrocities would not have arisen through attempts to rescue them. The time factor involved in trials might be overcome. If terrorists are released after a short time, they are at liberty again to wreak their havoc on the public of some other country.
Voices have been raised, even today in the debate, to abolish prisons. This is the final and very dangerous absurdity. How are the law-abiding going to protect themselves? There is a certain spirit abroad. I heard it in this House when there was the question whether the Price sisters should be transferred to Northern Ireland. The preamble always is, "We detest what they did but would you mind acceding to what they want?" There is the feeling that the bill must never be presented. Everyone agrees that terrorism is wrong but the bill should not be presented. That is the attitude.
We must return to the standards of a better age. We should have more support for our police in this place, in society generally and in the courts. One vital principle should be paramount: we should have regard for the victims and the potential victims rather than concentrate on the welfare of the criminals.

6.15 p.m.

Mr. Michael Ancram: I congratulate the hon. Member for the Western Isles (Mr. Stewart) on a courageous speech. The wider scope of moral standards needed to be introduced into the debate. I and many other hon. Members on both sides of the House feel strongly that this is a very important part of what is wrong with our society today.
I turn again to the subject of capital punishment for terrorist crimes. I, too, was violently in favour of the abolition of capital punishment. I was not a Member of this House at the time, but as a member of the general public I sat in the other place, listening, on the night that the Bill to abolish capital punishment finally passed through to become the law of the land.
But I have since been convinced, by feelings of outrage, I agree, but also by logic, that while abolition was right for the crime dealt with then, we are now faced with a totally different sort of situation. I have been asked what the difference is between one murder and another. No doubt between many murders there is not much difference, but there is a very strong difference indeed in terrorist murders.
In the normal case, a murderer knows whom he is murdering. He sees his victim, even if he is not able to identify him at that moment. But the terrorist who plants the bomb often does not even know how many people will be killed. He certainly does not know who they are. When a man does not care to the extent that he can put a bomb in a place such as the Tower of London—where, for all he knows, even his own relations might be visiting that day—and let people die without knowing them, then we have a new crime. It is not a crime just against the person but a crime against humanity. It is because I believe that it is a crime against humanity that I agree that we have to draw a line somewhere. It is a step that we have to take.
For ordinary crimes of murder, I have never believed that capital punishment is the answer. I shall take advantage of the fact that the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland is here to ask him whether the Government will not consider implementing the Emslie Report. For too long in Scotland we have been told that we have

to wait for England to make up its mind as to penalties for murder.
I must declare my interest, since I practised at the Scottish Bar for three years before my election to this House. I believe that the penalties for murder whereby a murderer, if he does think before committing the crime, thinks in terms of eight years' imprisonment are not sufficient as a deterrent or as a punishment. I believe that we must give power to our judges to impose determinate sentences on murderers.
Generally, there is growing disregard for law in this country. I am not talking about the criminal law but about the loss of respect for the law, for the authority of Government and sometimes, I fear, for the authority of Parliament. Ordinary people in my constituency ask me what is happening when they see responsible bodies, or so-called responsible bodies, openly flouting the law and getting away with it. There are examples before us.
There is the example of the Clay Cross councillors, the Clydebank rent rebels and the attitude of certain groups towards the Industrial Relations Court. All of these examples may involve political motives and the attitudes struck by those people may have been justified according to their lights. The fact that political leaders were seen openly to support the flouting of the law possibly did more damage to law and order than anything else. Let us not forget that it is the political leaders who are the law-makers. If they are seen to be saying that the law does not matter, how can we expect others to accept the law?
Because of this disregard for the law we are seeing a disregard for authority which endangers our very democracy. Democracy is based upon the consent of people to accept the laws. Once that consent goes, once it can be seen that laws are being openly flouted, we endanger our whole democratic system. We would do well never to forget that the alternatives to democracy are dictatorship, totalitarianism and anarchy.

6.22 p.m.

Mr. John Lee: I do not propose to follow the arguments of the hon. Member for Berwick and East Lothian (Mr. Ancram) on many subjects, save perhaps to say


by way of a preliminary comment that he has itemised a number of instances in respect of which he regards the conduct of various people as having helped to bring the law into contempt. I do not wholly agree with him, but I do not wholly dissent. It would be fairer to add that the example of the previous Government in flouting every convention of the constitution in the way in which they took this country into the Common Market is not a bad example of the way in which this House, even in the most peaceful way, can help bring the law into contempt.
Like the hon. Member, I suppose that I can declare a professional interest, in that I am a practising member of in criminal Bar in this country, and have been for some years. I formerly exercised judicial office overseas, and it is a macabre comment that the very first duty I had to perform as a very young cadet district commissioner in the Colonial Service in Ghana 23 years ago was to remand a man on a capital charge for which he was subsequently hanged. In the first week of my duties I had to remand three people, all of whom were ultimately executed.
When I turn to the subject of capital punishment it will be a sombre matter. I will not refer to that immediately, however, because there are one or two other pertinent matters with which I wish to deal. I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) rather condemned himself by some nitpicking observations in an otherwise able speech. Intellectually he is the most able member of the Opposition Front Bench. His views on this subject are shared by most of us on the Labour benches. However, I thought that it was rather inappropriate of him to lump some of his comments together—although it was done partly because of a commendable desire to save time. He lumped together the question of ill-discipline in school and the idiocies of students, with far graver matters such as non-political crimes of great violence and terrorism. That seemed to be unhelpful and unconstructive.
One category of crime which has not so far been mentioned deserves a comment. Alongside the growth of crimes of violence over the past 20 years there has been a great increase in the number of crimes involving fraud, abuses by com

pany directors, and so forth. One of the facts of crime statistics which tend to escape notice is that what can be termed as working-class crimes—theft, assault, burglary—are of an identifiable character, irrespective of whether the culprit is ultimately caught. If a house is burgled, a window is smashed or an assault takes place, it is a recorded statistic.
But unless there is a row within the boardroom, or the auditors are more vigilant than our company law sometimes seems to require them to be, many frauds are never noticed, let alone punished. Sometimes, when such frauds are punished, some of us may think the punishment to be ludicrously inadequate. A few years ago at the Central Criminal Court there was a trial concerning a banking fraud involving a total defalcation of about £13 million. This was a bucket-shop, set up as a fraud and perpetrated from start to finish as a fraud. At the end of the trial the persons concerned got only five years' imprisonment. I have reason to believe that the Lord Chief Justice had something to say to the judge concerned.
When that is compared with punishments for different kinds of crime it seems to be a singularly inappropriate penalty. I am not suggesting that that is in any way representative, but such things happen. In the last few years many crimes of a financial kind have come to light only as a result of squabbles, or people becoming bankrupt. The whole Poulson scheme of things has ripped aside and uncovered a range of crimes which many people suspected for a long time, although they had never realised the magnitude of them.
I come now to the question of violence and terrorism. I share the views of almost all my hon. Friends and many Conservative Members that it would not be right or seemly for the death penalty to be reintroduced for ordinary crimes of murder. At the same time, I feel profoundly uncertain about the situation confronting us as a nation and the world as a whole as a result of international terrorism. Let me take two examples which occurred outside this country but which we know are of a kind that could easily be reproduced in this country. Some of us may think that, in a sense, the ghastly business at the White Tower last week was in the same category, at least as to its nastiness, if not as to its magnitude.
There was the occasion when some unfortunate Olympic athletes were barricaded in for a whole week, and when the whole world stood by, seemingly helpless. Maalot is another example. Some of us on the Labour side of the House are occasionally accused of double standards. Let Inc take an example involving a case which I wholeheartedly support—revolution in South America. What conceivable excuse can there be for the wanton murder of the German diplomat in Guatemala? What conceivable excuse can there be for the cold-blooded murder of the American ambassador in Khartoum? These are things that ought to be said loud and clear by us all, whatever our views on these matters.
Let me offer what may be a solution. I do not say this without some anxiety, because I realise I may raise a storm. I measure my words carefully when I say that I do not think that the death penalty through the ordinary judicial process is appropriate in this case, simply because the opportunities for hi-jacking, hostage taking and other retaliatory action may render the situation even worse afterwards than it was before. What I am propounding is something which, obviously, no Government would lightly embark upon but which we ought to begin to consider as a possible necessity. I suggest that we might revive, in modern form, no doubt, the concept of outlawry in respect of certain categories of crime that are so outrageous as to be beyond the compass of humanity.
Hon. Members will recollect that among the four counts at Nuremberg there was the count of "crimes against humanity". I do not think it would be so difficult to define these. What I am really suggesting, tentatively, is that we may one day have to consider—if we continue both in this country and elsewhere to be seemingly impotent in the face of the events in Maalot, at Lod Airport, Khartoum, Guatemala and many other places—statutorily categorising certain kinds of crime for which the persons who commit them shall be stripped of the protection of the law and it shall be open to any individual to kill those persons.
This is a drastic thing to suggest. It is, in a sense, a confession of the weak

ness of the law in the face of concerted lawlessness. Obviously, to express this statutorily is a very difficult concept. It would mean, among other things, the emendation of the law of murder so as to prevent its being used for any kind of feuding, or as a licence for any kind of murder which does not come into the said category. A person carrying out such a killing would have, as it were—this is shifting the burden of proof of the law of murder—to prove that he had a bona fide belief, on reasonable grounds, that the person he was killing was the kind of person who came within the compass of the categories that would be itemised.
The idea bristles with difficulties. I do not pretend for one moment that any Minister would lightly embark upon such a dangerous and daring departure from our ordinary concept of law. But at the moment, if we are honest with ourselves, whatever our views and politics—and I stand on the Left of my own party—is it not the case that all over the world countries and Governments are mute and helpless in the face of international terrorists? We just do not know how to deal with them. We certainly cannot at the moment find ways of dealing with them within the compass of the law.
I know there are a number of marginal things which one may be able to do to tighten up security. It is a matter of concern to me that the International Air Transport Authority has not insisted on much higher standards of protection—that cockpits of aircraft are not insulated from the main body of the aircraft, and that people are not, even now, submitted to the necessary degree of thorough examination before going on board an aircraft. I use that particular example because, of all the forms of terrorism, that which worries us most must be air terrorism. One of these days there will be a shoot-up in the air in a giant airliner leading to an aircraft crashing on the middle of a city and killing not just hundreds but thousands of people. That is an indication of the magnitude and the gravity of the problem that we have to face and that is why, albeit tentatively and with some misgiving, I cast out as food for thought the very drastic proposal that I have put before the House.

6.35 p.m.

Mr. James Molyneaux: I am glad to speak immediately following the hon. and learned Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Mr. Lee). He and I have something in common, because, as I understood him, he reminded the House that early in his judicial career abroad he had to preside over a hearing which involved a murder charge. It was my misfortune, in my early days as a justice of the peace, to preside over a similar preliminary hearing. I noticed on that occasion that the accused was not legally represented. When I pointed this out to him and asked whether, in view of the gravity of the charge, he had better obtain the services of a good lawyer, he said "No, your worship. I do not want one. I am going to tell the truth."
I agree with the hon. and learned Member in another respect, namely, in respect of that section of his admirable speech in which he pointed out how helpless our civilisation is in the face of what he has quite rightly defined as air terrorism. At this point I want to comply with the custom of declaring one's interest. I have an interest in the matter of security, because I happened to be a passenger on British Airways Flight 6535 last Tuesday, on which a bomb was placed. I naturally have a vested interest in trying to prevent a repetition of that experience. There may even be a question of privilege, because I am not at all sure when I was making my exit through the emergency hatch I behaved with the deportment that befits a Member of this House—and for that I humbly apologise.
I wish to place on record the admiration felt by all the passengers on that aircraft for the courage and competence of the captain and his crew—both flight deck and cabin crew—who, in the full knowledge of the nature of the danger, performed their duties in a magnificent manner and, after our landing, made tremendous efforts to mitigate the effect of the hardship on the passengers in their charge.
It is to the subsequent security measures at Manchester Airport that I wish to draw the attention of the House. I freely concede that it must have taken a great deal of effort and time to assemble Special

Branch officers, many of who were recalled from day leave, but it was very strange that three hours after the accident it was possible for those passengers who had managed to retrieve their baggage to continue their journey by other means. I imagine that they were just as innocent as the rest of us who remained and were detained for a good many hours and subjected to a double interrogation, but it was definitely a weakness in that operation. It is with the difficulties arising in this period of the security operation—a matter of perhaps seven or eight hours—that I wish to deal.
There was, first, the assembling of the passengers, who remained in one large room, where they were interrogated individually for periods of between 20 and 25 minutes by Special Branch officers—an enormous number of them, who milled around among the passengers and asked them repeatedly, "Have you been interviewed yet?" One wonders what the reply of the guilty person would have been if he had been asked that question.
Secondly, there was what I can only call the fiasco of the photographing of the passengers. For some extraordinary reason this could not be done as we were put through the interrogation mill; it had to wait until the interrogation was completed. Then, the cameraman seemed to be very unfamiliar with his camera, to the extent that he was unable to open it to reload. In fact, after three of his colleagues had tried to assist him, it was left to a passenger to put matters right and get the thing going again. That part of the operation was so poorly organised than when it came to hoarding it was discovered that only half the passengers had been photographed. The other half had been missed entirely.
Thirdly, there appeared to be a complete lack of liaison between the security authorities at the airport and the airline staff and managers. In my presence, the Manager of British Airways at Manchester came forward to obtain information about the possible duration of the delay. To my utter astonishment, he was asked first, who he was and, secondly, why he wanted the information. He replied that he had brought a relief aircraft to the airport two hours before, and mildly suggested that it might be for the convenience of the passengers if he were allowed to


take them on to Heathrow. He got what I regard as a dusty answer.
While I fully appreciate the difficulty of mounting such an operation at short notice, I feel strongly that after eight hours had elapsed there could have been a much firmer grip, and better coordination. This kind of incident was bound to arise, and one wonders what the reaction would have been if an aircraft in the hands of hi-jackers had landed at the airport. In my opinion the travelling public will submit to a great deal of inconvenience provided that they are convinced that the measures are relevant and reasonably efficient. We, with the Secretary of State, all have a duty to ensure that that is so.
What is perhaps even more worrying is the question mark that hangs over the effectiveness of the recent operations by the Army and the police at Heathrow. We have doubts about the validity of the conclusions which have been reached from those operations.
Mention of Heathrow leads me to the unrealistic attitude of the British Airline Pilots Association to security at Aldergrove, Belfast Airport and its subsequent decision to impose niggling restrictions on the unfortunate passengers. I leave aside the hysterical threats of refusing to fly on the London-Belfast route. For some extraordinary reason such action always first affects the Glasgow-Belfast route. I am not entirely convinced that there is not some political motivation which might bear looking into.
Residing as I do on the boundary of Aldergrove Airport, and going through, on a weekly basis, the thorough double search procedure employed at the airport, I am convinced that security at that airport is all that could be desired. But I am afraid the situation is very different at Heathrow. I have had occasion, as have most of my hon. Friends who represent Northern Ireland constituencies, to receive complaints from constituents about pilfering from baggage at Heathrow. The authorities admit that this happens and they advise people not to leave valuables in baggage that goes into the hold. If it is possible to extract items from baggage, it is equally possible to insert lethal items into the baggage. There is room for considerable improvement here.
Finally, I respectfully suggest that the Home Secretary should consider the problem of terrorism in total and turn his thoughts to remedial measures to deal with a situation that has changed out of all recognition in the past three years. The Home Secretary has said little today about his thinking in this respect, but I trust that before the debate ends the Government will give an indication that they are aware of the peril and that they have the will and determination to deal with it.

6.45 p.m.

Mr. Charles Fletcher-Cooke: I should like to touch on the vexed question of the penalty for the terrorist. I am not against the death penalty, although I am against reintroducing it in the manner in which it was conducted both before and after 1957. I am against a mandatory sentence and I am against any attempt to categorise murders. Both those defects were apparent in the death penalty as we knew it until its abolition, and both were largely responsible for the change of opinion about it in the country.
The mandatory sentence offended public opinion, and rightly so. The attempt at categorisation—that the man who shot could be hanged whereas the man who knifed could not—and the complication of the double murder, made the coils of LaocoOn as nothing compared to the complications into which the 1957 Act got the courts. Even the Lord Chief Justice at the time—not a noted abolitionist—said that abolition was better than that. If there is to be a question of the reintroduction of the death penalty, there should not be special categories, as most speakers, and certainly most of my hon. Friends, think there should be.
I cannot see that the gangster who is besieged in a building and is determined to shoot his way out regardless of innocent bystanders and regardless of the police is in a different category from that of the terrorist who is equally careless and oblivious of the lives he takes. Indeed, it is arguable that the terrorist is a superior moral being, in that he is acting not to save his own skin but for a cause—no doubt a misguided cause, but at least a cause other than the saving of his own skin. I am not particularly enamoured of the idea that the terrorist is any worse than the gangster


who, with his gun, scatters death and destruction all round him on innocent people just as much as on those whose responsibility it is to enforce the law. That being so, I doubt whether it would be right to treat the terrorist in a special way, in the sense that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Mr. Lee) and my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick and East Lothian (Mr. Ancram) thought he should be.
Murder is murder, and whatever the motive and whoever the victim, the same considerations apply. I would have no objection to the reintroduction of the death penalty for a particularly foul murder, whether or not committed by a terrorist, but the reintroduction of the death penalty, however it is administered and whether it be judicially decided or by use of the Prerogative, gives rise to an immense difficulty. It is not the difficulty of martyrdom and it is not included in the other difficulties that have been mentioned.
The difficulty is that with the modern jury, for which the Home Secretary himself was largely responsible—the jury of, as it were, universal suffrage, of all people of 18 and upwards—it would in present circumstances be extremely difficult—I advance this very tentatively, because I do not know the answer—to get a unanimous verdict; and in the case of murder and the death penalty the verdict would have to be unanimous, in spite of the Home Secretary's introduction of majority verdicts for other crimes. I believe it would be almost impossible to get such verdicts from the modern jury, bearing in mind that many jurymen and potential jurymen would find it against their conscience to have anything whatever to do with a process of law which might end in a process of what they would regard as judicial murder. All those who are in favour of bringing back the death penalty—and I am—must seriously consider whether it would not be, to use an abject phrase, counter-productive, in that those who would otherwise be convicted might well be acquitted by the conscience of one juryman who would have nothing to do with anything that might end with the death penalty.
I beg my hon. Friends and those hon. Members on the Government benches

who, I believe, have not always thought this out, to consider most carefully whether paradoxically, the result might not be that the terrorists, gangsters or whoever they were, would be acquitted of the crime of murder for this reason. I know what my hon. Friend is going to say—that there would be other counts in the indictment, so that those persons would be convicted of serious wounding or some other charge for which they could be held for long periods in prison, so that the danger of their being acquitted would not be all that serious.

Mr. Ivan Lawrence: rose—

Mr. Fletcher-Cooke: Have I done my hon. Friend an injustice?

Mr. Lawrence: No, but could not that difficulty be overcome by allowing a system of relief from jury service for those to whom the whole process was obnoxious, much as now happens in the United States?

Mr. Fletcher-Cooke: That is a possibility which might be explored, but there would be attempts by many jurymen—a high proportion of the panel—to escape from jury service in those circumstances. I may be wrong; that may be an answer, but it must be a factor which weighs with all those who on other grounds would wish to see what the country would undoubtedly wish to see—a reintroduction of the death penalty for acts of terrorism and—I would add, myself—acts of violence of the gangster type.

Mr. Mather: My hon. Friend will recall that he and I served on the Committee that dealt with the Northern Ireland Criminal Justice Act of last year, which did away with the jury system for certain crimes and instituted the single judge. At that time there was a discussion whether a panel of judges might not be better in respect of the cases that would have to be considered. Has my hon. and learned Friend thought of this solution in place of the jury system?

Mr. Fletcher-Cooke: Yes, indeed. My hon. Friend and I urged upon my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Sir P. Rawlinson) in vain the view that there should always be three judges and not one in trials without jury. I still believe that we


were right and he was wrong, but at the same time I do not contemplate the possibility of suspending the jury system in the United Kingdom as a whole for these crimes. For one thing, international and national terrorism will be with us for many years, and perhaps municipal terrorism will—who knows? I could not, in any imaginable circumstances, contemplate the idea that we should suspend the protection of the jury more or less indefinitely throughout the United Kingdom, so I am afraid my hon. Friend's solution of suspending the jury system is much too drastic, and is one which I could not accept.

Mr. Roy Jenkins: Has the hon. and learned Gentleman fully understood his hon. Friend's suggestion, that in all murder cases, with the death penalty restored, these cases uniquely should be taken without a jury? That was his proposition—that this most final penalty should be arrived at uniquely, with a jury excluded for this purpose.

Mr. Fletcher-Cooke: I understood my hon. Friend to say that in the case of crimes of terrorism trial by jury should be suspended.

Mr. Mather: Yes.

Mr. Fletcher-Cooke: As I have said' I find difficulty in distinguishing these categories of murder, but even assuming one could, I do not consider it conceivable that one could for an indefinite period, or even for a definite period, entrust to a tribunal, even of three judges without a jury, the responsibility of finding the facts that would end in the death penalty. That seems to me to be something that would fly in the face of 300 or more years of our history, and I do not think it is right.
If there is anything in what I say it means that we have to proceed very cautiously on the reintroduction of the death penalty. It may well have to come back, in spite of the jury difficulty and in spite of the martyrdom point, and all the other very well known objections, but I venture to put forward another caution, because, as the Home Secretary and my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) said, this is a debate in which we must not let our emotions get the better of our reason.

So far, thank goodness, that precept has been followed. The other point that I wish to raise concerns the Metropolitan Police.

Mr. John Page: Before my hon. and learned Friend leaves the subject about which he has been speaking—I am disappointed at the line he has taken, which has hurt my personal views and argument very much—can he help a non-lawyer by thinking of a way of speeding up the process of law? One would want to see it changed so that terrorists can be tried and dealt with much more quickly than, say, the Price sisters were dealt with.

Mr. Fletcher-Cooke: I shall leave that to my hon. and learned Friend who will conclude the debate for the Opposition. He has been, and will again be very shortly, responsible for the process of the criminal courts. My understanding is that the backlog in the criminal courts at the moment is less than it was only a few months ago. Certainly, it is true that at the Central Criminal Court cases come on much more quickly than they have been doing over the last six or seven years—and I believe that in the country it is quicker still. I am sorry that I have disappointed my hon. Friend who on a previous occasion helped me in the very Department that we see represented on the Front Bench opposite. I am not against the principle of reintroduction, but I believe there are many practical difficulties, of which the jury is one.
The point I have been trying to get to—I shall be brief—is the question of the Metropolitan Police. I wish to put a thought in the Home Secretary's mind. We have now one of the best commissioners we have ever had, and we have a force which the commissioner has rightly described as a noble service. That force is overstretched and, despite a slight amelioration of the manning position mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman, is very undermanned. It must be dramatically increased. I should like to see it even more dramatically increased because I do not like the special police services that still exist.
I am glad that the Government abolished the special police services at London Airport. That was an extremely good and timely action, but there are other such services which suffer—though


not perhaps to quite such a dramatic extent—from the same difficulties and failings. I refer, for example, to the railway police—an invention of the nineteenth century, when pilferage on the railways was so serious that it was thought that special policemen who knew all about trains could help to stop it.
Pilferage is still serious, but there are far more serious things which are now within the control of the railway police. For example, the London Underground is a very dangerous area at night for unaccompanied people. The muggings that take place in the London Underground at night, on the premises of railway stations—indeed, this happens both underground and overground—are getting worse. The writ of the Metropolitan Police does not run there. Members of the Metropolitan Police are firmly of the opinion, and I agree with them, that if their writ ran in railway stations, the enforcement of law on the railways, both underground and overground, would be infinitely superior.

Mr. George Cunningham: Is the hon. and learned Gentleman aware that the powers of the Metropolitan Police in respect of railway property under existing legislation are due to expire on Wednesday next week and that they would have been renewed by the British Railways Bill—a Private Bill—which has been trying to get through this House for many months. Is he aware that that process has been impeded by the virtuoso performance of his hon. Friend the Member for Essex, South-East (Sir B. Braine), who was lauded for his efforts the other night in speaking for 3 hours and 16 minutes? Does the hon. and learned Member appreciate that the effect of that performance will mean that the powers of the transport police and other police forces on railway property will not be properly effective from next Wednesday when they are due to expire? Therefore, will the hon. and learned Gentleman support me and others in trying to persuade the hon. Member for Essex, South-East to remove his opposition to the Bill?

Mr. Fletcher-Cooke: I hardly think that that question is relevant to the question of who, in the long run, should be the policing authority for the railways. That was the point with which I was attempting to deal. I am not particu

larly concerned to preserve the present position. The whole burden of my argument was that the present position was bad and that the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Police should be extended to look after railway property. The same goes for the docks and for other security organisations where the police have difficulty in obtaining access. I refer to Smithfield Market and Covent Garden Market where people are dressed like policemen but act, as it were, as private police forces in those areas. None of those forces can have the powers, the mobility, the large view, or the probity, of the Metropolitan Police. In those areas and in many other places it is time to take action on similar lines to that taken at Heathrow. Heathrow merely happened to be the worst example.
On the question of enforcement of the law, I very much agree with the Home Secretary that it is enforcement and detection rather than the size of penalty which is important, not only in enforcing the law but in gathering respect for it. The police force in London and in the big cities must be not under-manned but, if necessary, over-manned. Any Government who find themselves in office in October or November must, as a matter of priority, see that the necessary sinews of war are made available so that all the ills which we have been discussing today, and many more besides, are remedied in the only way possible.

7.6 p.m.

Mr. Stan Thorne: The title of the debate is "Public Safety and the decline in Respect for the Law." The right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph), speaking from the Opposition Front Bench, spread his remarks far and wide under that umbrella. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary dealt more than adequately with the question of capital punishment and the arguments put forward by some for its reintroduction.
Unhappily, the remainder of the debate seems to have concentrated on the question whether we should now reintroduce capital punishment because of the incidence of violence and so on. It is unfortunate, in our present situation, that the only aspect of public safety and respect for the law that we consider to be worthy of our attention today is that of capital punishment.
We might legitimately ask the question, "To what law are we addressing ourselves?" The hon. Member for the Western Isles (Mr. Stewart), speaking on behalf of the Scottish National Party, attempted to introduce some divine law into our proceedings, and certainly his philosophy seemed to be based on that concept. The right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East made a pointed reference to religion and ideology. We might also ask what is meant by "ideology". It is a term that embraces a system of beliefs. Whenever we use the word about others and their beliefs we tend to use it in a derogatory sense. If we speak of other people's beliefs, we refer to them as "ideology" However, obviously when my right hon. Friend speaks it is the truth we are hearing, and not ideology.
I could make an equal claim, but do not do so because I freely admit that my views on this matter constitute a system of beliefs. The whole argument on this subject stems from a series of values which one either does or does not possess. The whole basis of our law in Britain is a system of values. What do we hold as valuable in our society?
When we talk about public safety, it is worth considering what we have in mind. Certainly it is worth considering what I have in mind. For example, who are the weak in Britain today? Certainly they include children, elderly people, the disabled, the blind and the socially deprived. They are the weak in our society.
In my view, there are certain safeties to which we should address ourselves. The first is safety from want. The Atlantic Charter uses some grandiose words about freedom from want. Have we provided that in Britain? Irrespective of the political complexion of Governments since 1945, have we really thought seriously about safety from want?
Then there is safety from fear. What has the law done in that connection? Then there is safety from exploitation. It seems to me that we live in a society which is structured fundamentally on the exploitation of one section of society by another. I shall return to that subject. I make no apology for raising it.
Then there is safety from discrimination. In recent months it has been plea

sant to hear hon. Members condemning discrimination on sex grounds. But we have discrimination on racial grounds, on religious grounds and, clearly, on class grounds. How does the law prevent discrimination of that kind?
When we talk about violence—I speak here with some feeling—we ought to consider what violence means to the man with a family who is told that his services are no longer required, that he is redundant, and that he is to be sacked. In my view that is an act of violence against that man and his family. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Halesowen and Stourbridge (Mr. Stokes) may laugh. For my part, that is a fundamental characteristic of our society. It happens all the time in various parts of the country. Does the law prevent it? Is there anywhere enshrined in our law a provision about man's right to work'? There is not.
As for bureaucracy in our society, I am sure that we can all tell stories about the way that it functions and about its impersonality. Max Weber and others wrote about it in the early days. They described the ways in which those who were weak and humble could be subjected to violence by the bureaucracy in our huge organisations. The State itself is guilty of violence. It is guilty of violence when it decides that there may be a prima facie case against a widow who takes a lodger. The State seeks to discover whether the lodger is co-habiting with the widow. If there is any suggestion that that may be the case, the bureaucrats deprive her of benefits to which she may otherwise be entitled.
The police are not free from this violence, as recent events in London have shown. However, without getting into that argument I want to tell the simple story of a constituent of mine who only last weekend faced a major problem.
The problem is landlordism. It is a common one. As it is structured at present, does the law protect people against landlords? It may be thought that, in general, it does. My constituent telephoned me to say that his electricity supply had been cut off. He is the tenant of furnished accommodation. Two or three months ago he had been to see me because he had received notice to quit. His landlord had become aware


that a Rent Bill was going through the House which would give his tenant security of tenure. He wanted to jump the gun by getting his tenant out before the Bill became law, so that he could put in another tenant who was capable of paying a few pounds more in rent. In other words, he wanted to exploit his property and his interests.
Happily, the rent tribunal refused to evict my constituent. It gave him security of tenure until November of this year. But, not to be outdone, the landlord tried other means. He attempted to change the tenancy from a weekly one to a monthly one. He refused to accept any rent the following week when it was offered to him, and said that the tenancy was now a monthly one. Then he took my constituent back to the rent tribunal because of alleged rent arrears. Again the tribunal refused to accept the landlord's case and again, happily, it repeated the six months' security of tenure which my constituent had been given.
Next, the landlord decided to increase the charge for electricity, and then he cut it off. I appealed to the agent, who told me that he could not help because the landlord was in Spain and did not often come to this country. He has not even a telephone here. He owns a number of properties, but he does not live here. The agent said that he could not turn on the electricity until he obtained the landlord's permission.
I then turned to the law. I contacted the police. The police saw the agent, but thereafter they could take no action. As a result, my constituent spent two or three days without electricity
When we talk about public safety, is it not time that we considered tightening up the various loopholes in the law which permit landlords and others who have some control over other people to utilise their privileged positions in order to exploit deprivation of one sort or another by means of business techniques?
I could deal with this wide subject at length. For example, subliminal advertising goes on all the time. There are supposed to be laws protecting the public against it. Profiteering is an area in which the Conservative Party would not be prepared to countenance laws of any description. Profit is almost holy in our society. That is what it is all about—the making of

profit. Sir Denys Lowson can make his £6 million. One day we may be able to take him to court. We may be able to take some action. If and when we do, I shall have a beer to celebrate. It seems that it will take a very long time to introduce the sort of laws that will throttle the Sir Denys Lowsons of this country.

Mr. John Page: rose—

Mr. Thorne: No, I will not give way. I have only just begun. It seems time that we in this House addressed ourselves, as people outside do, to the values that buttress our society. The protection of people is what law is all about, and not the protection of property. Let us consider the example of an hon. Member going into a shop next week and stealing a packet of cigarettes. That involves private property. It would virtually mean the end of an hon. Member's political career. It would be on the front page of the national Press—"Denis Skinner Whips a Packet of Fags".

Mr. Dennis Skinner: I do not smoke.

Mr. Thorne: We all know what would happen to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner). What about the motorist who is found drunk in charge of a car, who is taken to court and who is found to be a Member of this House? It is almost as if a person has arrived when convicted of being drunk in charge of a car. Such a charge establishes that a person has lived. That is the morality of our society. All sorts of moral questions arise when private property is involved—for example, a packet of fags stolen as a result of shoplifting—but it seems that being drunk in charge of a lethal weapon, in circumstances which could result in the loss of life, is not immoral. When someone has two or three endorsements on his driving licence the only matter that perturbs him is the thought that the licence may be taken away. Those are the values that we must consider when we are talking about respect for the law.
It seems that what I have listened to since I was elected in February—it has been said constantly from the Opposition benches—is a demand for conformity. Conservative Members say, "Those are the values that we have set for you. We


have socialised you over your life into accepting them. We have methods involving the use of social controls to see that you accept them." We are told that we may improve society only within the framework of that system of social control. Conservative hon. Members are perturbed about the growing number of young people who refuse to accept their values and refuse to conform to the values that have been set for society. It is for the people who refuse to accept such values that Conservative Members seek better and more efficient means of social control.
The spokesman for the Opposition—the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East—talked about permissiveness in our society. I think that it is a terrible society that permits 100,000 people to be unemployed. It is a terrible society that allows old-age pensioners to live on the measly sum that they now receive.

Mr. Bob Cryer: It is increasing.

Mr. Thorne: It may be increasing, as my hon. Friend the Member for Keighly (Mr. Cryer) suggests—I am only too pleased to hear it—but he is kidding himself if he believes that we have now established an adequate pension for old people. We shall do that only when old people are able to provide themselves with the necessary means of life in common with others—in other words, and in the immediate sense, when we adjust their pensions on the basis of average earnings. When we have done that there may be some prospect that pensioners in our society will lead reasonable lives.
It seems—I may have gone on too long already—that our laws mirror the nature of the society in which we live. For me it is a capitalist society. It is a society that is divided into classes, in which one class exploits the other and the minority oppresses the majority. Our laws are meant to perpetuate that state of affairs. I serve notice on the Opposition—as many of my hon. Friends have done over the years in this House—that their time is running out. We are having this debate because when the class struggle sharpens the Opposition sharpen their knives in terms of postulating how they can make the people conform, protect their privileged position and continue to rule. It seems to me that that is what it is all

about. It is precisely because of that that it is necessary for us to change this society. We must establish new laws that will mirror a society in which we can live on the basis of the precept,
From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs
which will free us from the violence of our present society.

7.27 p.m.

Mr. Ivan Lawrence: I declare a financial interest as I practise at the criminal bar when my parliamentary and constituency duties allow. I take a simplistic view about the issues of law and order. There are two prime, fundamental, overriding requirements of the State and of Government—namely, to protect the State for external and internal attack. Internal security for the State is every bit as important as external security. It is the function of Government to provide that security.
In some countries internal security is achieved by an oppressive police. In our society it has been achieved by a relatively unobtrusive police force and with the voluntary wish of the people to be bound to certain restraints. That has always been the real social contract between law-abiding people and a law-abiding Government. Unhappily, like other social contracts, it is now beginning to break down. People who should know better are withdrawing their support from the law-abiding activities of the State.
What is to blame for this state of affairs? I shall not rehearse the speeches that have already been made by my right hon. and hon. Friends. I believe that the climate of general public opinion, of the permissive society, is substantially to blame; but so are Governments. There is an ever-lengthening list of pieces breaking away from the fabric of our ordered society. If we give the State too much responsibility that must mean that responsibility is taken away from the individual. The individual will inevitably become less responsible in the home and will care less for old people and children. If we put children into schools too big to provide personal contact between teacher and pupil, if we appoint teachers who do not believe in discipline, and if we abolish uniforms that evoke some respect, we will undermine, deep down, the fabric of our society.
Those are long-term causes, but there are more immediate acts and defaults of Government which affect the current climate of disorder—namely, what a Government do about television that shows too much violence or obscenity; what they do when they have to deal with individuals like the Clay Cross councillors; how they react when one of their members attacks the judiciary, how they react to demands for the retrospective payment of money; how they react to the request that illegal immigrants be made legal, not because the act is illegal but because it provides an encouragement to others who might take part in the illegality in the hope that at some other time a soft Government may excuse them; how they react to the demands of those who want to destroy the Industrial Relations Act by non-democratic means; how they react to those who would force a separation of private practice from the National Health Service; and how they react to large powerful units which, in our community, wish to go against the rule and the control of a democratically elected Government.
Public anger is great in my constituency and that, in a mass form repeated all over the country, is not conducive to respect or obedience. The social contract is frayed, and it is further torn by even more Government action. We had the recent experience in this Parliament of rates, with otherwise law-abiding respectable people refusing to pay, which is an illegal act.

Mr. George Cunningham: The hon. Gentleman referred to the Clay Cross business. He will know that local councillors who undertake illegal expenditure can be required under the law to pay out of their own pockets for that illegal expenditure. I wonder whether he would agree that if a Minister of the Crown is responsible for an illegal action he, too, should be required to pay out of his own pocket any costs that may arise.

Mr. Lawrence: That is an interesting suggestion. I do not need to go that far. My point simply is that it is wrong for any Government to be seen to condone clearly illegal acts, because it not only encourages others to perform illegal acts in the expectation that they may get away with them, but lessens respect for the Government and the very institution

of government. I think that that, by general consent, certainly on this side of the House, is the current opinion.
What is to be done about it? What can this, or the next Government, whom I hope we shall have in October, do about this problem? The containment of public disorder must depend upon four factors: a sufficiency of laws to stigmatise the wrongdoing; an adequacy of the police force to apprehend the wrongdoer; an efficient process of criminal trial to make sure that the guilty are convicted; and sentences severe enough to deter others and to protect the public.
Are out present laws adequate? Broadly, I think that they are; but public order legislation is in a mess and is vitally in need of simplification, explanation and consolidation. The law needs strengthening in certain parts.
People are very distressed when they see IRA collections being made in public houses, and they were extremely distressed when we had that exhibition of IRA members wearing uniforms in public at a funeral. The root of the matter concerns what can be done about the IRA. The Public Order Act takes care of these manifestations, but the problem is what can or should be done about the IRA. I will not spend time going into that problem. I ask the Government—if not the present Government, the next Government—urgently to consider making the IRA illegal in this country.
The police may object, but, with the best will in the world, we cannot expect the British police force to do other when they are understaffed and underpaid. If they are to be involved in a massive amount of extra work, of course they will object. If they were adequately staffed, would their objections be so strong?
I noticed—this point is important, but not so important as the IRA point—some confusion on the part of the Home Secretary over the Red Lion Square riots. I suggest that we should look again at the law on processions. Perhaps there should be a requirement of prior notification to the police of a procession so that the police may lay down conditions. I understand that at present there is no requirement that the police be informed in advance of processions.
The first question is: are the laws adequate? Broadly, yes; but there are important areas of concern.
Secondly, is the police force adequate? The answer is "No"—nothing like adequate. There is a shortfall in manpower of 7,000 men outside London and of 5,000 in the Metropolitan Police. That is on establishment. It may be that the establishment figures are wrong to deal with this new surge of public disorder. It means that there are fewer police officers to detect crime, to apprehend the villains and for crowd control when people exercise their rights. It is vital, at a time of the threatened breakdown of law and order in this country, for the strength of the police force to be increased. Therefore, I suggest that there should be an immediate reallocation of priorities. Just as the defence of the realm from outside comes high on the level of the State's priorities, so should the defence of the realm from within assume a much higher priority up the scale than hitherto. Perhaps with that we can have a more detailed consideration of mechanical aids, special constables, and so on.
Is the process of criminal trial adequate? It has been made speedier and more efficient under the Courts Act 1971. However, I express caution about the proposals to curtail the right, available to the individual, to be tried by a jury. They are being looked into. If 50 per cent. of those who are tried by jury are acquitted, how efficient is the system?

Mr. George Cunningham: They may be innocent.

Mr. Lawrence: Yes. It means that they have either been wrongly acquitted or wrongly charged. It cannot mean anything else. If 50 per cent. of those who are tried by jury are acquitted, they have either been wrongly charged or wrongly acquitted.

Mr. George Cunningham: I do not see the logic of that.

Mr. Lawrence: If the hon. Gentleman does not see the logic of that, perhaps he will explain how his logic works.

Mr. George Cunningham: I will.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon): Even if it is

50 per cent.—that is doubtful—of those who plead not guilty, it is a small proportion of those who are charged with criminal offences. No system either of detection or of criminal trial can be absolutely perfect. There must be some mistakes. It is only right that a criminal trial should find them out.

Mr. Lawrence: Yes, but it is also a large proportion of those who are charged with serious crimes, plead not guilty, and are tried before a jury. I am not suggesting that we can have a perfect system, but that we should look for ways of improving it. I suggest that the Minister might immediately go about improving the system of criminal trials by setting up an inquiry into the feasibility of making oral confessions admissible only if they are corroborated by a tape recording. In my experience, too many people who are acquitted would not be acquitted if juries were not faced with doubt about the veracity of the evidence of those who say that oral admissions had been made.
Are sentences adequate to deter and to protect the public? Again, they have been reviewed and increased for many public order offences, particularly those for the possession of firearms and crimes of vandalism. However, there is no machinery for automatic review subject to parliamentary approval. I submit that a body should be set up to deal with such a regular review.
The subject of terrorism has properly taken up a lot of the time of this debate. There is a tremendous amount of public feeling throughout the country that capital punishment did and would deter. We ignore that public feeling at our peril. If a sufficiently large number of people have that strong feeling we in this place merely give some sort of acceptability to criticism that Parliament is not truly representative or expressive of the wishes of the people if we do not take note of that feeling. I do not want to take the concept too far, but if enough people feel strongly about this issue we ought to take substantial regard of their feelings.
Are people right to say that capital punishment deters? I do not know. But equally we cannot prove—nobody can prove—that they are wrong. When we are faced with civil disorder of the sort we have at present we as a Parliament


should be prepared to reconsider the situation. I do not suggest to Members on the Government side that this matter should be dealt with by way of a referendum.
The Home Secretary raised the objection that people of the sort we have been discussing would in certain circumstances be considered to be martyrs and that that would be a victory for the IRA. That assumes that they are not already martyrs if they receive lengthy sentences of, say 20 or 30 years. It is to assume that the Price sisters were not martyrs when they were subjected to forced feeding. We are talking about comparative martyrdom, not the presence or absence of martyrdom.
I turn now to finality. Society may believe that to produce a final act on one person may save a final act being committed on two or three people, or even on 10, 20 or 30. This is justifiable in time of war. We do not use the finality argument in time of war when we drop bombs. Yet this is a time of war, not an external war but an internal war, and an internal war is every bit as important as an external war.
The Home Secretary carries much respect in this country but is generally thought to be soft on law and order. In his speech this afternoon he showed some concern for the rule of law at home, but I noticed that he did not succeed in persuading his party that the rule of law at home was a necessary part of its election manifesto. That matter did not appear in the manifesto. I wonder how many hon. Members on the Government side go along with the Home Secretary when he shows this concern for law and order.
The hon. Member for Preston, South (Mr. Thorne) said that the Opposition did not have any regard for values. He spoke against a man not convicted, not tried, not even charged, on the assumption that he is guilty. What sort of value for the freedom of the individual is that?
At present our democracy is under attack from within by powerful forces of disorder and might is fast becoming right. The country is demanding a Government who will produce a determined defence against this internal attack on our democracy and ensure that might, as well as right, is wielded in future by the State.

7.44 p.m.

Mr. George Cunningham: I wish to express disagreement with the hon. Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence) in his view that if 50 per cent. of people charged in the criminal courts are acquitted it must mean either that something is wrong with the processes of trial or that they were wrongly charged. Unless we have a system in which the police take decisions whether a person is guilty, and that is regarded as the end of it, there are bound to be a number of cases in which there are adequate grounds for putting the matter to a court although the court may decide that the accused is innocent or that it is not satisfied sufficiently that he is guilty. The hon. Gentleman is surely falling into the same error as that of Sir Robert Mark in his notorious speech of over a year ago. I have great respect for Sir Robert's leadership of the Metropolitan Police, but he said something along the same lines as the hon. Member.
There is nothing wrong in people being acquitted in court. It would be a serious reflection on our legal system if the vast majority of people who appeared before courts were convicted. That could only mean that the courts were taking the view that if the police thought that an accused was guilty, and thought so sufficiently strongly to bring him to court, then he must certainly be guilty.
I shall now explain to the hon. Gentleman the background, at which he could not be expected to guess, to the question which I put when I intervened in his speech. I asked him whether he thought that a Minister of the Crown who undertook illegal acts should be obliged to make recompense in some way. Earlier in the debate the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) suggested that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary had encouraged illegality in a number of ways. To hear some Members of the Opposition talk, one would think that never had any Conservative Member—certainly no Conservative Minister—had anything to do with any illegal actions.
The hon. Member for Burton was not a Member of the House in the last Parliament, but he knows quite well that three years ago it was revealed that British forces in Northern Ireland, under


the direction of and with the full knowledge of Ministers, were undertaking torture of IRA prisoners.
The facts on this were brought out—when many people, including myself, did not at first believe them—in a report by Sir Edmund Compton. Some hon. Members appeared to consider that the instances might have been regrettable but that there was nothing illegal. But there have been a number of cases in which the British Government have recognised that actions were illegal and have therefore had an obligation to pay compensation.
According to an Answer which I received today from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, compensation has been paid so far in three cases to the people concerned. The compensation does not amount to much. It seems that one does not get much for torture. One is paid much more if one's property is damaged. The compensation so far totals only £25,000.
Lord Carrington and the hon. Member for Welwyn and Hatfield (Lord Balniel) knew that those illegal actions were taking place. They encouraged that illegality, and the fact that it was intended to deal with people who themselves were guilty of gross illegalities is no defence of it. I raise this point so as to plead that we do not engage in this debate in throwing charges from one side of the House to the other about encouraging illegality. I do not think that any significant proportion of the 635 Members of the House encourage illegality. We shall distract ourselves from what needs our attention if we indulge in throwing brickbats from one side to the other—

Mr. Patrick Wall: I accept the last part of the hon. Gentleman's argument but I do not agree with what he said about torture. Is it not the case that the British Government are defending this allegation in the International Court? Surely this makes it clear that the British Government do not believe what the hon. Gentleman alleges.

Mr. Cunningham: The hon. Member must find his own word for it. The facts are known and accepted by this House. To their credit, when the facts became known, the previous Government decided that that must never be done again—

Mr. Wall: "Torture"?

Mr. Cunningham: If depriving a man of food over a prolonged period, requiring him to stand up against a wall in an unbearable position and having in the room a noise machine purely and solely intended to deprive a person of the input of his senses are not torture in the hon. Member's opinion, I would suggest that he consult those who have undergone the experience of those techniques over a considerable time. This is a matter of judgment and if the hon. Gentleman does not like to call that torture, that is his decision. In my book, that is most certainly torture.
What matters to the point that I am making is that it certainly was illegal, otherwise the Government would not be paying out compensation—and that was done by a Conservative Government, not a Labour Government.

Mr. Malcolm Rifkind: Surely the hon. Gentleman has demolished his own argument. He has told the House, correctly, that as soon as the Government realised that the acts to which he referred were wrong, they immediately ensured that they would not be repeated and compensation has been paid. He will acknowledge, surely, that there is a vast difference between that and the Labour Party in opposition openly encouraging the councillors of Clay Cross to defy an Act of Parliament, in the full knowledge that that would be an illegality.

Mr. Cunningham: I do not support what the councillors of Clay Cross did, and that is all I intend to say about that. The hon. Gentleman also was not a Member in the last Parliament. Ministers were aware—he can look up the record if he wishes—of the actions of which I am complaining. It is not the case that once they found out what was happening they stopped it. They had to wait for two reports, one making the facts public and the second saying in its minority report that these things should not continue. I invite him to look up the record on this matter. It is not creditable to the British House of Commons, which tended to ignore the point for far too long, and it certainly is not creditable to the Conservative Government of the time.
I should like to go on in a less provocative spirit, because this important subject


requires a bipartisan and impartial approach. It seems to me that we are in for a prolonged period—at least 50 years—in which terrorist activity is likely to be with us. There seems little chance of eradicating it in the short run. Who knows why this is the case? It may be that, because we have not had wars for some time, the natural element of violence in people's make-up is manifested in internal violence. But whatever the reason, we shall have this prolonged period of inclination towards violence, and, more seriously, a tolerance of violence by those who do not themselves commit it. It is that tolerance of crime by those who do not themselves commit it which is the most serious thing and which we need to try to eradicate.
When this kind of subject is debated, one lot of Members say, "There are lots of complaints against the police and this must be put right", while another lot say, "We must support the police and the other security institutions and not press too hard any complaints against them." If we are to deal with a period of at least half a century of sustained violence of this new kind, we shall have to have a two-handed policy. We shall have to be extremely tough with abuses by the police and other security authorities and at the same time we shall have to support the police when they are doing what they should do. We shall have to put up with measures which in the past we have not been prepared to tolerate in order to catch, identify and keep in jail—not just get them there—those who commit these offences.
I want to touch on some aspects, first, of respects in which there is legitimate concern about activities by the police or the authorities of the State. The position is getting worse. My experience is that one encounters more often than in the past cases in which, although one cannot be certain of the facts, one feels in one's own mind that there is probably a just cause for complaint.
On New Year's Eve last year, I was walking through Piccadilly Circus. That is not perhaps a wise thing to do, but it enabled me to witness a member of the public being arrested. I did not see what led up to the arrest, but he was arrested by several policemen. When I saw the

incident he was already firmly and literally in the policemen's hands. He was being held on the ground face down, and two policemen were standing one on each of his legs. The man was incapable of moving.
If it is right to hold a man, no doubt this is the best way to do it—on the ground in those circumstances. But in the middle of Piccadilly Circus—this is the point that I stress—it reflects on our society that two constables can stand on the legs of someone they are arresting. If those constables did that up a back alley, people might say that it was worse. No, I do not think so, because of what it reflects about our society. If they do it up a back alley, they are afraid of public opinion, of someone passing. In this case they were not afraid of anyone who might pass, and that reflects something very serious.
A complaint was made and the evidence was insufficient. There is no more reason why the authorities should believe a Member of Parliament than anyone else: that would be quite a non-judicial approach. Those policemen were not prosecuted and no disciplinary proceedings were taken against them. I make no complaint about that. I think that the evidence was insufficient. But I draw the attention of the House to the fact that when that sort of thing can happen in a packed public place, then the police feel too secure and we need to look into these things more carefully.
A second change is long overdue. We are dealing in part with the complaint raised by people who might have been charged improperly, wrongly, unnecessarily, or on insufficient grounds. It is high time that we got around to the system which applies in almost every other part of the world and prevented the police from bringing prosecutions.
In Scotland the police exist to find the facts and not to bring the prosecutions. That is left to the procurator fiscal. In most countries it is up to a public prosecutor to decide whether a charge should be brought, what charge should be brought and so on. That is an important protection because it brings a quasi-judicial, certainly an independent, view to bear on whether the facts are


sufficient to take the case to court. The public prosecutor or procurator fiscal would normally be a barrister or solicitor of some standing and could be expected not to bring a prosecution which did not look likely to stand up in court.
More important, perhaps, such a person would not, as the police sometimes do, choose the charge in order to fit the evidence. I can recall seeing a couple of cars collide in my constituency. One of those cars was being driven dangerously; and probably they both were. The one which I was sure was being driven dangerously was discovered afterwards to be a police car but the charge that the police brought against the other driver made it irrelevant whether the police car had been driven dangerously or not. Had they brought a charge of careless driving against the other driver, the behaviour of the police driver would have been relevant in court, but the charge they chose made it not relevant. I do not believe that the procurator fiscal in Scotland or a public prosecutor, if we introduced such a thing, in England, would be free to make that choice. Such a public prosecutor would also be the natural independent element to introduce into the examination of complaints against the police. I think that most people are increasingly persuaded that that independent element ought to be introduced.
There is also the matter of access to solicitors by people who have been arrested, and all the other content of the judges' rules. It is high time that this House decided whether the judges' rules are law or not. If they are as important as they are said to be, they ought to be in a statute. They ought not to be laid down by the judges without the authority of Parliament. If that were done, they would be tidied up in ways in which they need to be tidied up—and have needed for a long time. I do not think that we shall be able to give the police the backing and support they will need in dealing with the situation over the next 50 years unless we have complete confidence in their integrity, and that means the removal of complaints of the kind that I have just mentioned.
It would also help if the judges—I mean magistrates as well as judges proper—could restrain themselves from

the various rude remarks they are inclined to make from the bench. It would be conducive to the judicial atmosphere of courts and a feeling of fairness on the part of defendants if the judges could just take their decisions and give their reasons without delivering a sermon at the same time. The more they are inclined to give a sermon, the more likely it is that the sermon will have absolutely no effect. Some of the rude remarks made by judges at defendants, who can of course make no reply, call in question the judicial nature of our courts. If it were the practice in this country—not laid down in statute or anywhere else—that judges never did that sort of thing in England—"They might do it in other countries but not in England, no"—we should boast of that practice throughout the world. We cannot boast of it because our practices are exactly opposite.
On the other side, we need to recognise that the enemy is the criminal and not the police, and that the police are there to protect us. [HON. MEMBERS: "Ah."] The reaction of hon. Members of the Opposition illustrates the point I am making. These two things must go hand in hand. It is not right that one person should represent one side of the case and another the other side of the case. We must have both at the same time, because people will not be prepared to give the police that trust which they need if these abuses are not corrected—and they are real abuses at present.
It is high time that the police got better protection with respect to disciplinary proceedings. It is not uncommon for a policeman to be subjected to disciplinary proceedings in respect of actions which, if done, certainly constitute a criminal offence, but which have been referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions to see whether a prosecution should take place, and the DPP has said that a prosecution should not take place. It is not uncommon that upon the same facts disciplinary proceedings are taken. This is not supposed to happen. The Home Office is quite clear on the point of principle that if the DPP says that the evidence is not strong enough for a criminal prosecution, disciplinary proceedings should not be taken.
In practice, however, that principle is evaded, because the words used by the DPP in transmitting his decision to the


chief constable are such as to leave an element of vagueness whether he is saying that he is not satisfied that the action constituted a crime, that he is not satisfied that it constituted a sufficiently serious crime, or that he is not satisfied that the evidence would stand up in a court of law. Sometimes he uses those latter words, but he does not always have to do so, and the element of doubt which is left in some decisions by the DPP leaves it open for people to be subjected to disciplinary proceedings on the same facts as might have been involved in a court of law. That has been a complaint by the Police Federation for some time, and the Home Office has done precious little about it.
On general crime—not terrorist activity—there is a tendency in the lower courts, in magistrates' courts, for our magistrates to be so aged that they have forgotten the value of money these days. Some magistrates impose penalties of £2, £5 and so on, which have absolutely no effect upon the person penalised. It would be a good thing if magistrates were told that they might as well not bother if they are not intending to fine someone £20 or more. Of course, in very special circumstances they could fix a smaller fine than £20, or whichever figure we chose. But they ought to have some indication of what makes it worth while imposing a fine at all.
The courts are also extremely lackadaisical about getting money out of people. This is partly because they do not have a separate service for doing exactly that job. The probation officers sometimes—to their great chagrin—are landed with the task of getting money out of people. It is not their job. The courts should have available to them some independent service to which they can turn for doing the collection of money and the examination of the offender's means other than the Department of Health and Social Security.
Turning to the matter of terrorist activity, I think that we all recognise a feeling of considerable helplessness. One thing is certain: the penalty that is imposed is not the main deterrent. I happen to be one of those Members who—in the spring of last year I think it was—voted for the retention of the death penalty in Northern Ireland, in the special circum

stances of Northern Ireland. I did that because this is supposed to be a United Kingdom and I was prepared to see the death penalty for terrorist activities restored in Great Britain in order not to have a distinction.
I confess that I was not at all sure that I was right. Many of my colleagues were absolutely certain that I was wrong, and told me so in no uncertain terms. But one thing is surely undeniable—that the penalty is meaningless if, as the Home Secretary said, we are not catching the terrorists. The important thing, therefore, is to turn to means, if we can think of them—this is where one feels the helplessness—of creating a better chance of catching them.
There is a tendency, perhaps particularly among progressive parties, to feel that the activities of the Special Branch and what used to be called MI5 should not be expanded in a modern society. With the new dangers that face us, I do not think we shall be able to do without expanded activity by the security services and the Special Branch. We must get used to the fact that activities such as those which have been alleged against the Special Air Service in Northern Ireland are an essential ingredient if one is dealing with an internal security problem. Plain clothes activity is the only way of dealing with that situation.
I also think that in the end we shall have to get round to having identity cards. I can see no reason why we should not go back to the war-time situation, in which people had identity cards and did not regard that as an intrusion into their privacy at all. We have at present everyone identified in a maze of Government institutions under a totally different series of numbers. One has a national insurance number, a medical number and an income tax number. It is time that people had one identity number which could be used for all public purposes and which would also be useful on identity cards when required.
We also need to accept that in modern conditions the Army will be a fall-back weapon for internal security purposes. It is a pity if it has to be deployed at Heathrow Airport, but we are facing such dangers that we ought not to regard that as a temporary event which will end as soon as possible.
Finally, we need to take sterner measures on the control of explosive materials. Most people who work in the construction industry can get their hands on explosive materials. These materials are supposed to be locked up carefully, but they tend to be locked up in little shacks on construction sites, and, as we all know, the vast majority of the workers on those sites come from a certain part of the British Isles. I cannot believe that a good amount of the explosive material that has been used here and in Northern Ireland has derived from other sources. I should like to see a Committee of the House or some similar body investigating these points and others and considering a tightening up of the processes for catching criminals.

8.11 p.m.

Mr. John Page: This has been an extremely important and somewhat dramatic debate. I am grateful that the Home Secretary has come back into the Chamber, obviously having heard that I was going to be called next. It is a dramatic debate, because the attitudes of both Front Benches, reflected in the speeches that were presented today, are quite different from those adopted in previous debates on home affairs, particularly with respect to terrorism.
About six weeks ago the Home Secretary gave me a rather cold brush-off at Question Time about the reintroduction of capital punishment. About a week ago his attitude was different, and today he clearly stated that if he were persuaded that it would be effective and was necessary he would be prepared to recommend the reintroduction of capital punishment for acts of terrorism. That is a brave step forward and a much more definite statement than we have had on this issue from any other Home Secretary.
I come now to the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph). It was a most thoughtful, distinguished and intellectually courageous speech, and it contained two important statements. First, my right hon. Friend distinguished death by terrorist activities from ordinary crimes of murder and said, if I am not paraphrasing him too tightly, that he felt they fell into different categories. For someone who had previously been a convinced abolitionist,

and for a man of his distinction, that was an important statement.
He made a commitment that the next Conservative Government would set in train an inquiry to examine the efficacy of the death penalty as a penalty or deterrent for terrorism. That, again, is important. I only wish that Conservative Ministers had taken that step two years or even one year ago.
The last speech of major importance was from my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Sir P. Rawlinson). He has unparalleled experience in dealing with the detail of terrorist crimes, and his was a memorable and important speech which pointed out the way in which I hope the body of opinion in this House will move to come into line much more with the body of opinion in the country. I was very close to Trafalgar Square when the Whitehall bomb went off. I was shocked and am still shocked by the memory of the smoke and the empty roads, with the ambulances and fire engines rushing along them with sirens wailing. I said then that we must not allow such incidents to be an accepted part of our way of life.
Ever since that day my hon. Friend the Member for Esher (Mr. Mather)—whose experience dates back further than mine because of his knowledge in Northern Ireland—and I have sought to persuade successive Home Secretaries to take more drastic action to show the unacceptability of terrorist crimes in this country. Unfortunately they have fallen for the Home Office line that the greatest danger is the danger of over-reaction, and that the best approach is to play it cool and keep a low profile.
I believe that the recent incidents of the bomb in the Tower of London and the bomb in the aeroplane happened because we succumbed to the warnings about over-reaction. We suffered from the much greater danger of under-reaction. Members of Parliament are representatives of their constituencies, not delegates, and from time to time it is our duty, our privilege and our right to try to lead public opinion, even if that appears to conflict with the views of the general public. Nothing is more dangerous than for this House and for any Government to be totally out of line with the current thinking of the people. I do


not know what democracy is supposed to be, but it is surely more than just a method of election. We have been in danger of losing the sympathy and the trust of ordinary people because they feel that we do not understand their beliefs and their emotions.
I have had many letters about the whole business of terrorism and the activities of the IRA. They have all said that there is not a sufficient reaction. The time has come for a new look at the whole question of terrorism—and by terrorism I mean the crimes of hijacking, kidnapping and causing, or attempting to cause, an explosion. That will be the subject of a Ten-Minute Bill to be introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Esher next week if the House is still sitting. We have to take steps to show the country that the Home Secretary, the Home Office and the Government are not complacent and are not sitting with folded hands saying that everything possible that could be done is being done.
The Home Secretary itemised three measures which I think should be taken immediately to deal with acts of terrorism—first, the banning of the IRA; secondly, the introduction of passports or some kind of travel document between this country and Northern Ireland; and, thirdly, capital punishment for terrorist crimes.
We are told that the police have mixed feelings about the banning of the IRA. We are told that they are afraid that the IRA would go underground and that they might lose some of their sources of information and intelligence. It would be wrong to brush those arguments aside, but I must say that up to now those sources of intelligence have not been very fruitful. I think that because the IRA is not banned, we are not putting the full pressures of public opinion on the side of the police and the Government against the activities of the IRA and other terrorists. While collecting boxes are still allowed in the pubs of London and other cities, how is anyone to feel that the Government are taking the IRA threat seriously?
On the question of passports or travel documents, I agreed with the latter part of the speech of the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Cunningham) more than I did with the former part. He said that he did not

feel that carrying identity cards in this country would be particularly obnoxious. If it were pointed out to the people that by carrying identity cards they would be safeguarding their country and their families against the activities of terrorists, I believe they would be willing and eager to do it. Indeed, I believe that the very announcement of the necessity for identity cards would bring home to the general public the true situation. If, in this country, we had identity cards similar to those used in Ulster, the whole of the business of the passage between Ulster and this county would be simplified.
As the Home Secretary said, something should be done about the border. This is not the time to discuss it, but I should like to see British troops gradually withdrawn from Belfast and the cities and put on the border. That is where they should be.
I turn to the issue of capital punishment for terrorism. There is much agreement this evening that the reintroduction of capital punishment for terrorism need not interfere with the attitudes of people who would not accept the reintroduction of capital punishment for other kinds of murder. Terrorism and killing by indiscriminate bombing are acts of war. The only people who can conscientiously refuse to accept the death penalty for bombing are those who would conscientiously object to the killing of an enemy by an armed soldier. That is a proper intellectual stand to take.
The question of martyrdom has been dealt with in other speeches, so I will not rehearse it. The weight of this argument has been reduced ever since the incident of the Price sisters and the death of the terrorist who killed himself by refusing to eat when in prison. He found his own martyrdom, and so the plinth of the martyr's memorial does not only have to be the steps of the gallows.
On the question of martyrdom, there is the allied danger of the taking of hostages and other terrorist activities during the time of a trial. It was this aspect of the speech of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Darwen (Mr. Fletcher-Cooke) about which I was sorrowful, because I had hoped that he would suggest a way to speed up the trials of terrorists. I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Sir M. Havers)—who is to


reply to the debate for the Opposition—and the Solicitor-General will consider how that can be done, by the trials being heard without a jury, but with three judges, or by some other means. We had an important intervention by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Mr. Lee)—a lawyer, and, as he said, a Left-wing supporter of the Labour Party—who felt that such action would be acceptable to him.
When we had a debate on capital punishment soon after I entered the House, a dear friend of mine who was a convinced abolitionist said, "You're not going to vote for retention, are you?" When I replied "Yes", he looked at me and said, "You're doing it for revenge." I was startled by that. I have tried to analyse my thoughts in making this speech to see whether an aspect of revenge, which I think would be inappropriate, helped me to make up my mind.
I believe that if I were the father of a boy who had had his face smashed in by the bomb at the Tower, or lost an arm and a leg, I would search for revenge. I would want to seek out the bomber who did that damage and inflict some physical harm on him if I could. But, thank God, I am not the father of those little children.
I do not believe that my judgment is coloured by revenge or emotion. I believe that it is impossible for anyone to say that capital punishment cannot be an added deterrent. Unless the Home Secretary and hon. Members are convinced that it could not do any good in deterring the terrorist, the House should wholeheartedly press the Government to take action to reintroduce capital punishment.

8.28 p.m.

Mr. Bob Cryer: We are grateful to the Opposition at least for presenting us with this subject for debate. It was interesting to hear the views of Conservative Members on various aspects of the topic. For example, the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Page) talked about revenge, with some suggestion that it might be an emotion that had approval.
Another hon. Member said that if the Government condone a breach of the law they are discredited. That comes ill from people who have supported Governments of both political parties which have relied

on either the first-strike or retaliatory use of the most horrible weapons mankind has produced. Apparently, the photograph of one small child on the front page of a tabloid newspaper strikes an emotional chord, but weapons that can obliterate, destroy and maim millions of men, women and children are part of a national tactical situation, and are not to be criticised.
When the present Government wisely decided to set out on a review of some of these horrific weapons, they met with universal condemnation from the Opposition, who are prepared to take an emotional attitude—quite rightly—over one boy but not when such weapons are to be used in a situation where millions of little boys will be involved. Governments and their attitude towards law and respect for the law are brought into discredit when they do nothing but acquiesce in the bloodiest and most horrible war which has ever taken place—the war in Vietman. Because it was distant, because the people involved had different ideologies, it was not condemned. But when terror comes close to home and small numbers are involved, it becomes a matter of emotion.
It has been suggested that a demonstration is somehow a canker in our society, an infiltration from within. But when horrific things occur, whether they be committed by a Government prepared to use mass slaughter to pursue their policy, either by direct threat or by implication, or in any other way, then men of conscience have the right to demonstrate. They have the right to march in the streets and to show that they do not wish to support such policies. They can write to The Times and see their Members of Parliament. They can do all these things.
In a free society it is an important right of the people to demonstrate against something which in some instances is a general matter of consent between the major parties. Indeed, if we did not have the right to demonstrate against the law, and to make breaches of it, we would not have achieved some of the advances in our society, I share Lord Devlin's view that a person has the right conscientiously to break the law, provided always that he is prepared to accept the consequences of that breach. If that were not so, of course, the Suffragettes would


never have gained the status they ultimately gained. They would never have been able to draw attention to the inferior position of women.
There are similar examples of men and women of good conscience who have been prepared to break a law which they did not consider to be respectable, and as a result have brought about its improvement. We must make a clear distinction between a conscious intellectual decision because of some burning issue and a blind stupid breach of the law. That distinction has not been made by hon. Members opposite.
But Governments themselves are not excluded from criticism. People talk about a diminution in respect of the law, but even, turning aside from large issues to the precise criminal aspects of the law, I think that the Opposition have tended to make exaggerated claims about lack of respect for the law. Far and away the vast majority of our people respect the law. Indeed, today's Daily Express reports the first drop in crime figures for years. That is surely a matter for celebration.
Respect for the law is by no means diminished to the extent that hon. Members opposite suggest. However, respect for the law means respect for the judiciary and the people of the law. It has been suggested that somehow or other the judiciary should be above criticism, that we should not have the right to criticise. But in any society one cannot take away the right to criticise because the very clash of ideas and critical reviews bring improvements. The judiciary is the basis of the administration of the law and I think that it could do with some improvement.
For example, the magistracy, the volunteer section of the judiciary, does a great deal of work. It deals with about 97 per cent. of all cases, doling out more punishments and decisions than any other section of judiciary. It does much good work. But the basis of entry to the magistracy could be broadened.
I suggest that the secrecy, the shroud, the lack of known criteria for admission to the magistracy, does harm to that body and does not invoke the confidence and respect of certain sections of the population. If people are to make judicial decisions they ought to be chosen openly and

the criteria for the choice should be known. The higher judiciary should have a proper basis of entry, by which I mean that the restrictions on the training of solicitors and barristers should be done away with. To the people outside the profession, the division between solicitors and barristers is an absurdity in itself. The business of eating dinners in Inns of Court and the wiggery and the gownery are patent absurdities.
These are the people who administer our law. Many of them are eminent. But it is not the wiggery and gownery which produces respect, it is the decisions and the integrity of those people. There are good grounds for claiming, certainly historically—I know that it is breaking down today, thank goodness—that the members of the legal profession were drawn from a small section of society which was associated with ownership of property and the ruling of society.
The Solicitors (Amendment) Bill which has been through this House would, hopefully, end or at least ameliorate some of the criticisms I have made. Let me remind the House that people are not enamoured of the law when they face high conveyancing charges and when those who set out to do conveyancing work, perfectly properly, are subsequently prosecuted by the Law Society. A case of such a prosecution was reported in the Yorkshire Post of 9th February 1973. The report said:
Three officers of the National House Owners' Society … were told yesterday that cut-price land conveyancing was illegal. Magistrates in Harrow, Middlesex, decided that the men were guilty under the 1957 Solicitors Act.
These people were apparently investigated by Which?, the consumers' magazine. They were not inefficient. They did make some errors according to the report.
They were pursued by the Law Society and duly prosecuted, to put them out of business. It may be argued that that was perfectly proper. To the ordinary people it gives rise to the suspicion that lawyers are a tightly-knit group of people organising themselves to maintain a lucrative source of income. If people are to maintain respect for the law this sort of appearance has to be eroded. The law has to be made more open. It might help if solicitors did conveyancing work at half price.

The Solicitor-General (Mr. Peter Archer): My hon. Friend was fair enough to say that there appeared to have been some errors made by the people in question. He will recognise that such errors could be very costly for the ordinary members of the public whom they affected.

Mr. Cryer: I accept my hon. and learned Friend's remarks. I do not say that conveyancing work should not be supervised. What I suggest is that the way in which the legal profession is organised gives rise to doubt in people's minds. It would be unfair not to point out that many solicitors recognise these deficiences and are remedying a situation in which in some areas there are no solicitors' offices.
In my view, in order to broaden the profession it is an important element that people should not feel diffident and intimidated when going to solicitors. This is an important thing which only a section of the legal profession recognises.
I want to say a few brief words about the difference between our attitude to the law for property and the law for people. This has been elaborated by my hon. Friend the Member for Preston, South (Mr. Thorne) so I will not go into it in too much detail. But I would draw attention to the fervour with which hon. Members opposite want to ensure that breaches of criminal law are pursued with fervour and efficiency. They also want to pursue breaches of trade union law with fervour and efficiency. I want to point out to them that under our factory laws maiming and injury of enormous proportions go on year in year out, yet the number of prosecutions which are undertaken is pathetically small in comparison. If we are to have respect for the law, then the law should apply equally to both the employer classes of society and the employees.
I will mention briefly some of the statistics. Over the past five years to June this year there were about 10,000 accidents every year in which an eye injury was caused which lost the person concerned three days or more in time off work. Yet in those same five years only 15 prosecutions were instituted. In evidence to the Robens Committee the Factory Inspectorate said that each visit by a factory inspector revealed a breach of the law. Some 250,000—a quarter of

a million—visits are made every year yet the average number of prosecutions is about 1,000. They rarely, if ever, go to indictment: they are nearly always dealt with in courts of summary jurisdiction. And this is against a background in which 1,000 people are killed every year in industry and 20 million working days are lost.
We have heard a good deal about Northern Ireland. Let me remind the House, as I have before, that in the period between 1968 and the beginning of 1974 there were approximately 1,000 people killed—the same number as are killed every year in factories and on construction sites throughout the land. That is the sort of situation that exists in industry, yet our Factory Inspectorate, backed, alas, by the Government, pursues a policy of persuasion.
If an attitude of zeal towards the criminal classes is necessary on the one hand, on the other hand an attitude of zeal is necessary towards the employing classes who are in breach of the law. I deliberately divided the House over an amendment of mine on the Health and Safety at Work Bill which involves persuasion rather than prosecution. I noticed that hon. Members opposite who are so zealous in their pursuit of the law trooped into the "Aye" Lobby in order to defeat the amendment. They must be careful not to be too loose-worded in their pursuit of respect for the law.
Lastly, I want to say a few words about the police. I have every respect and admiration for the police. They are a force that does without arms, by and large, and that is a very great virtue. I hope the day will never come when our police either request or seek, or we acquiesce in a request for, the carrying of arms. On the other hand, there is no doubt that our police force is not composed of universal Dixons of Dock Green and there are a number of instances which demonstrate that.
The police have greater powers than has the average person. We must, therefore, make sure that the police force is democratically controlled. When complaints are made about the police they should be investigated not internally by the police but by an external body or person so that the investigation can be seen to be impartial. For those who apply the law as for those who are


brought before the law, the maxim must hold that justice must not only be done but be seen to be done.

8.45 p.m.

Mr. Neil Macfarlane: No one in the House underestimates the gravity of the situation that confronts us. It is a source of constant concern not only to us but also to our constituents. Judging by the plethora of letters I have received it is certainly in the forefront of their minds. The Home Secretary's task is not an easy one and, perhaps because of the emotions involved, his is the hottest chair at the Cabinet table and in Whitehall.
I shall not bore the House by too lengthy a review of the last two decades, but we might just consider the kind of society and world we have fashioned for someone who is 20 years old today. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) said that family influence and external pressures are of paramount importance for the stability of the nation. By the time our 20-year-old has begun to take notice of what is happening in the world, he will have become conditioned to the death and destruction that occurred in Vietnam—war by television, as it seemed to be. He will have seen the growing violence throughout the 1960s—the combination of hijacking, hostage-taking, bombing and genocide in Africa and Asia—and he will have had a growing awareness that it was creeping closer to the shores of the British Isles. This 20-year old would have witnessed several political assassinations—the Kennedy brothers, Martin Luther King, and others. He would have witnessed the senseless slaying of diplomats in Africa, and many other events. In the late 1960s he would have seen the development of violence in Ulster.
While it is true that we are not the only generation to have witnessed violence and lawlessness, the fact remains that it is now projected as a way of life into everyone's home, and this may well create an attitude of indifference to violence in our way of life. Over the last 20 years or so we have become totally aware of regular violence and we are becoming completely immune to positive reaction to it. It is dangerous for us to accept with a shrug of the shoulders regular reading about the loss of human life. I fear that

that happens because of the frequency with which we witness violent events. We are making people totally impervious to the type of society we want in this country, which has hitherto been the envy of so many other civilisations.
We are now confronted by the forces of political anarchy which are presenting to us a crisis point the like of which we have not seen. I firmly hold the view that Westminster is not listening to the plea that is being made by the majority of citizens, who are alarmed at the lack of positive action. Many positive steps have been suggested during the debate, and if some of these steps were taken a crumb of comfort would be given to the citizen who feels that he is under seige.
I have spoken in my constituency—as I have no doubt many hon. Members on both sides of the House have spoken in theirs—to mothers who are now afraid to bring their children to London because of the tragic disaster that occurred at the White Tower last week. I certainly openly declare that I want to see the reintroduction of capital punishment in cases where citizens have been killed by terrorists, by bombing, or in furtherance of a crime.
One of the problems is that in the mid-1960s capital punishment was abolished and a vacuum was created—because it was not replaced by anything, such as a longer term of imprisonment. When some weeks ago, I asked the Home Secretary how many murderers had been released, having served less than 10 years of their prison sentence, since 1955 the answer was in excess of 150, and the average sentence served was between eight and a half and nine years. Can we wonder that there is concern and consternation in the country when people read such figures?
I am certain hon. Members can understand why there is widespread concern in our constituencies. Very often in this debate I have heard the phrase, "the public". These people are not "the public"—they are our constituents. We represent them, and I do not think we are giving a sufficiently positive lead for the protection they expect us to give. Too often and for too long there has been vacillation. My hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence) accused the Home Secretary of having been soft on law and order. Quite honestly, I do not


believe that over the last decades he is alone in that. Certainly, I hope we can encourage him in his very difficult task. Holding the balance must be an enormous responsibility, and we all respect and understand the difficulties which are there.
Unless, however, we react firmly and positively, I fear that the worst is yet to come. For far too long we have not really had an effective deterrent. We have not even had a partial deterrent. The hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Cunningham) made some sensible suggestions towards the end of his speech—as my hon. Friend the Member for Esher (Mr. Mather) had already done earlier—referring to the issue of embarkation cards. That is a highly sensible suggestion, and a positive step. The issue of identity cards would be another positive step—and the provision of passports for everybody in these home waters who wants to visit this country may be long overdue. That, again, is a further positive step.
Whether or not it is the Home Secretary representing a Labour Government of the day matters not; it is Westminster which is seen to be failing to take positive action. Police recruitment needs to be stepped up, as does their pay, and they are entitled to expect more support from magistrates' courts throughout the length and breadth of the country. The detection rate must be improved. I can only commend the tremendous resolution and speed of action after the bombings at the Old Bailey last year, when a gang of criminals were caught before they took off from London Airport. That was a masterpiece of speedy reaction and resolution by the police. Heaven knows how many lives the police saved in Ulster and in this country as a result of that tremendous speed and reaction. They probably saved dozens of lives here and in Ulster.
The outrages at the Old Bailey, Aldershot and the Tower were not really caused by dedicated patriots. I believe that they were the actions of cowards. It was wanton slaying. While recognising the argument that has been repeated throughout today's debate—that martyrdom can be created—I believe that the vast proportion of bombers, anarchists, terrorists, call them what one may, will think again if they know that the penalty is death.
If we are to ensure that the public safety—and we must remember that we in this Chamber are responsible for it—is to be maintained, positive steps have to be taken. We have heard possible positive steps mentioned today. It is imperative that a firm lead should be given from this House by the Government of the day, because it is expected by the nation—never more so than at this moment. If we fail now, the fabric of society that we have held dear for so long will be at stake.

8.55 p.m.

Mr. Leon Brittan: This debate combines a discussion of public safety with the consideration of the decline in respect for the law. When the two major historic sights of our capital city, the Palace of Westminster and the Tower of London, can be subject to terrorist outrages within a matter of weeks, nobody can doubt that there should be genuine concern for public safety.
But the signs of decline in respect for the rule of law are no less dramatic. The readiness of respectable citizens to withhold their rate payments is a vivid example. The preparedness of small sections of the community to use industrial power for political ends, such as the abolition of private beds in National Health Service hospitals, is another example. In a different sphere a third illustration is provided by the refusal of students to allow views with which they do not agree to be expressed at their universities.
Is there any connection between growing concern of public safety and the decline in the respect for law. What are the causes? What can we do about them? I believe that there is a connection between the two phenomena. As human society has developed, civilisation and order have first been imposed by brute force—and only later has the law been regarded as something which one is not merely obliged to obey but which one is right to obey, and is deserving of respect. This process can all too easily be reversed. If we lose respect for the law, we create a climate in which physical law enforcement becomes a virtual impossibility. That is a slippery slope, and we are already well beyond the first steps on it.
There are a variety of reasons for this situation. International political disputes


which spread to this country, and the realisation of latent power by groups who are able to hold up the life of the nation, are but two of the main factors. Some of these factors we can do little about, but the most potentially dangerous factor of all is one which can and must be tackled by us. It is a factor which has not so far been mentioned in this debate. I refer to inflation. Its economic effects are well known. Buts its social effects are even more insidious.
By destroying confidence in money, inflation shatters people's feelings of stability, and that has a profoundly disruptive effect on behaviour and attitudes. Nothing could be more conducive to the growth of disorder than the growth of inflation. The best illustration of this is the readiness of decent people to break the law by withholding rates. Those rate increases occurred partly as a result of specific governmental policies, partly as a result of local government reorganisation, but largely through the pressures of inflation. If inflation is allowed to continue, the mild threats of rate protest groups we have heard so far will seem like harmless vicarage chatter in comparison with the social disorder and disruption that will follow. If we want to restore respect for the law, one of the most important steps we should take is to put at the forefront the fight against inflation.

The Solicitor-General: Is the hon. Gentleman approving what he has just described?

Mr. Brittan: Absolutely not. I am warning. I am pointing out that this is the consequence of not paying sufficient attention to the fight against inflation. We have social disruption leading people who previously have been respectable citizens to be ready to take action against the law which otherwise they would not take. I deplore it. I am saying that to prevent it growing and spreading we must tackle the cause, which in this case is inflation.
Another vital step to which reference has been made is for the Government to support the law and not to undermine it. It is easy to make cheap political capital with jibes about trigger-happy members of the judiciary, and it may be expedient for the Labour Party to be silent when the unions hold the nation

to ransom. But no Government who behave in that way can be surprised when their negative example is copied and exceeded by those whose business it is to undermine the law and to disrupt public safety.
Inevitably, however, there will be those who, understandably enough, will wish to concentrate on the direct action which can be taken to combat disorder as well as the long-term problems of dealing with its root causes. It is in this context that we hear the growing calls of capital punishment for certain crimes and today, above all, for terrorism. We must respect the arguments on both sides, but surely the point which should be stressed is that, whether it is right or wrong to bring back hanging, it will, one way or the other, have only a very small impact on the problem. The danger of the debate about capital punishment is that for supporters and opponents alike that debate could provide a distraction and a substitute for a consideration of the real problems facing our society. In practical terms far more will be achieved by strengthening the police, not only by paying them more but also by giving them every possible support when they come under attack.
It is also essential for us to deal effectively with terrorism not only on a domestic but also on an international scale. We should take the lead in seeking an international agreement to refuse refuge to terrorists and, if we cannot achieve this universally, we should at least encourage and participate in a boycott by airlines of those countries which give refuge to terrorists within their shores. We should also make it clear that no terrorist caught committing a crime in this country will be allowed to escape to refuge overseas just because it may be politically embarrassing to hold him or her in this country. We should be firm in our resolve not to surrender to blackmail, whether it is the physical blackmail or the terrorist holding a hostage or the moral blackmail of the hunger striker.
There is an even more unattractive fact that we must face. Terrorism has already been so successful that in combatting it we may have to submit to policies which normally would be unacceptable. In a sense, that is a victory for the terrorist, but it may be necessary to recognise that


limited victory so far if the ultimate victory is to be ours.
There are, for example, arguments both ways about one of the matters which have been raised in the debate—the value of identity cards—and there are arguments both ways about the value in this respect of spot searches in the fight against terrorism. But we can no longer afford to reject these weapons out of hand and on principle, however distasteful they may be.
Society, as we know it, is fighting for its survival. To win that fight we must remove the basic ills which have led to the malaise, such as inflation, and thereby restore respect for the law. But we must at the same time fight the physical battle ruthlessly. If we do not do so, rest assured that our enemies will. A society that does not tackle its basic problems cannot survive, but a society that has not the self-confidence to hit back at its enemies does not deserve to endure.

9.5 p.m.

Mr. John Stokes: It is a matter of some sadness that England, our own country, is no longer the peaceful place that it used to be and that it had the reputation of being for so many centuries. We have always been proud of the Queen's Peace. Responsibility for keeping the peace had been laid down since far-off Saxon times. Every Sunday we pray in church that we may be godly and quietly governed. What has gone wrong? We have heard a great deal about that this afternoon.
Two things have gone wrong. First, there has been a fundamental change in the moral climate of the country. Secondly, successive Governments have been too weak. It is a Government's prime responsibility to keep the peace and to guard our shores. The Government should also help to mould the social and moral climate. It was most unfortunate that some years ago the present Secretary of State for the Home Department expressed himself so fervently as being in favour of the permissive society, which at that time he equated with the civilised society. I do not know whether he holds to that view, but I believe that the permissive society is a wretched concept that is getting out of hand. It is responsible for much unhappiness, particularly among

young people who long for some guidelines of behaviour.
I find the whole attitude of the Home Office, with its accent on permissiveness, to be completely out of touch with the strong feelings of our constituents. The majority of people want a return to capital punishment for IRA bombings and other terrorist activities such as hijacking and the murder of policemen and soldiers. Yet, far from listening to that strongly expressed demand, the Secretary of State for the Home Department implies that he has some kind of moral superiority in his opposition to the death penalty. That is an attitude that I find obnoxious.
The country does not want a weak Home Office; it wants one with a bit of backbone. There is already burning resentment against the Home Office and against Parliament over immigration. Weakness over law and order only widens the gap between politicians and the public. In the old days in England, and as part of our Christian heritage, there was great respect for the person, for life and limb and for private property, which was the guardian of liberty. That respect is less today. In my view it has been lessened by television and the other media.
The curse of public life today is the desire to be thought at all costs to be liberal, trendy, progressive, and to want change simply for the sake of change. What is the earthly use of trying to codify women's rights in some immensely complicated Bill and creating a new bureaucracy when women can be mugged, robbed or assaulted in our streets more than at any time in our history?
As for the violence of the IRA and of foreigners in England, it is, in my view, a matter of national will. Either our State has the will to survive or it has not. At the moment we are showing signs of losing the battle. The violence amongst our own people is partly the result of the decline in religion and morality and partly the lack of discipline and authority in the home, at school and at university.
It is significant that never, perhaps, in our history have the Armed Forces been so respected as they are now. The Cyprus incident proves my point. Yet we would do well to remember that the Services


are highly disciplined and trained forces. I believe that in many homes parents are weak and lack the confidence to lay down what is right or wrong for their children. Violence in schools is reaching new levels, and is highly disturbing. Worse still, in the universities many of the staff are supine, and utterly fail to lead and guide their students. No wonder that a number of young men and women leave the universities to take up their first jobs bewildered from the life they have led for three or four years in an atmosphere of chaos and anarchy.
We have seen violence get into the trade unions. We saw it start at the Saltley Coke Depot a few years ago. A mood is growing in the country that to be successful any public protest must have violent means. The media have a great responsibility here. Too often those who damage property at universities, or who terrorise their fellow trade unionists, get off scot-free, and the recent attempt to influence a judge and jury in a court of law by a mob outside is something new in our long history.
Today, from hon. Members of the Government side we have heard attacks on the police and the Special Branch. These attacks are growing in intensity and must be resisted. After all, the police are protecting us, the ordinary public. Surely they are on our side, and we must support them. There are various extreme Left-wing organisations which wish to undermine our society by creating disorder and chaos. Law and order is vital for society. This is obvious and elemental, but it still has to be stated. Besides law and order there must be certain standards of conduct, as well as good manners. Civilisation, as we have developed it in this island over the centuries, shows definite signs of breaking up. We must, as a country, get back on the rails. It is up to the House to give a lead before it is too late.

9.13 p.m.

Sir Michael Havers: The second part of the debate has been concerned with the decline in respect for the law. It is worth considering for a moment what is meant by respect for the law. To me it means acceptance by the public of our laws and, even further. of our rules of conduct which may not be subject to the sanction of the law. This operates only because as a nation we

work by consent. Our courts could be brought to a standstill instantly if prison officers refused to bring prisoners to the courts, if jurors refused to be sworn and if witnesses refused to give evidence. It would be impossible to deal with this action by contempt of court or any other way which would effectively restore the operation of the courts.
This Chamber works by consent and a few hon. Members could soon bring our proceedings to a standstill and cause total disarray. Schools operate by consent. There are not enough teachers, or sanctions, to impose the rules if all the pupils decided not to observe them. The same sort of thing could happen in a university, in a bus queue or in a doctor's surgery where those who arrive first expect to be seen by the doctor ahead of the latecomers.
The other side of the coin of consent to the rule of law is that those who have suffered or whose families have suffered—for example, the father of a daughter who has been violently raped—do not take the law into their own hands. That father is prepared to let the law take its legitimate course, the rapist, if found, to be arrested, tried and perhaps convicted. Even if he is acquitted, although that parent may feel that the acquittal was totally unjust, he accepts the decision and does not take the law into his own hands.
That is what respect for the law means, and it includes respect for the system. It must mean that that system must operate successfully. It follows automatically, as so many hon. Members have said, that for the system to operate successfully the police must be effective and strong and their morale high. One hopes that the Home Secretary's words today will prove justified by the future success of the police forces.
Greater safety, which has also concerned us in this debate, can be arrived at by greater security, but it is important to remember what greater security may mean. It will never be possible to make anywhere bomb-proof, but if protection is sought, inconvenience to the public could become almost intolerable. If this building is to be made bomb-proof, it would mean that no one could be admitted without a close search and in certain cases that the identities of those seeking admission would have to be


checked. That would be intolerable not only to those who seek to see Members but to Members themselves.
The various checks now made in a major airport such as Heathrow are generally accepted. Very few people complain about delays caused by the fact that their hand baggage and persons are searched, and those who do complain are usually treated with some justifiable abuse by other passengers who set their safety higher than any inconvenience. But if we are to make every aircraft bomb-proof so far as we can, every bag in the luggage hold will also have to be closely checked. In the end it will again have to be a decision between making the system as perfect as possible and how much grave inconvenience can be suffered.
On this point—little has been said of this today but I understand that Mr. Speaker has ruled that it can be referred to in this debate—the provision of passes for Members, their spouses and secretaries and others who have to come here, is right, in order to provide that measure of protection. But when that is accepted, it must follow that strangers will have to accept that there may be some delay and inconvenience when they seek to gain admission to this building.
As one could have forecast when the terms of the debate were published, a great deal of time has been taken up with the question of capital punishment, not only for murder but for terrorist offences. It might assist the House if I describe my own views and speak of personal experience.
Probably because of a somewhat conventional upbringing, I was strongly in favour of capital punishment when I was called to the Bar just after the war. In the 10 years that followed, leading up to the 1957 Act, I was engaged in more than a score of murder cases which involved the death penalty if the accused were convicted.
Over those 10 years, my views changed. They changed probably for illogical reasons—because of the effect on the court generally which resulted from the man in the dock facing the death penalty. I have no doubt that it affected witnesses. I saw it happen time after time. I know that it affected juries. I suspect that it affected judges, or most of them. It

certainly affected those counsel with whom I discussed it during the course of the case. Indeed, nicotine stains on my fingers existed only once, during a particularly long and difficult murder trial. It affected ushers and everyone concerned. One could see people walk into court and peer at the man in the dock in a way that never happens in a murder trial now. One suspected, in a macabre sort of way, that one could see them imagining the rope around his neck as he sat in the dock.
Partly for those reasons and partly because I began to feel that there was no deterrent effect because of the death penalty, I became a devoted anti-hanger. I remained as such until March of last year, when a photograph of a particular friend of mine appeared on the front pages of the newspapers as a man who suffered gravely as a result of the bomb outside the Old Bailey. I began to wonder then, and I have been wondering since, whether a distinction can or cannot be drawn between ordinary murder and terrorist offences. I began also to think about this matter because of the feeling in my constituency. I say at once that my constituents would be overwhelmingly in favour of capital punishment, and in spite of that they have selected me. But I know what their views are, and I am beginning to wonder whether we should not begin to recognise the feeling that exists in the country. Members, newspapers, spokesmen on this subject, all use words such as "revulsion", "horror", and "shock". But whatever words or descriptions are used, the reaction is that members of the public seek something which will make it possible for this most terrible crime to be marked as such.
In looking at how murder ordinarily operates, I think that it can be fairly divided into two categories. There is the category in which one has the death of the intended victim, whether the motive be hatred, greed, envy, lust, sudden loss of temper or, more and more now, a mental state of mind. The other roughly divided category is that in which the death of the victim is incidental to the crime—for example, in the course of a bank robbery, killing to escape arrest or something of that kind. Certainly the great train robbery was described as a crime against the State. I believe that that was an exaggeration. It certainly


was not intended as such by the robbers. Their intention was to rob for their own gain, though the consequences might have been described as a crime against the State.
Terrorist activities seem to me to be quite different, because those are genuine crimes against the State. The terrorists intend, as part of their plan to force the State to accept what they want—for example, a united Ireland or the release of political prisoners—that innocent and wholly unselected victims should be injured or killed. Equally serious in my mind, they intend as an alternative that the general public should be put in fear of such injury or death. That is part of the deliberate campaign they conduct.
If there is such a distinction, as I believe there may be, perhaps there should equally be a distinction between punishment in the case of terrorist offences and punishment for ordinary murder. I do not know. I am quite unable at present, speaking solely for myself, to make up my mind about it. I want to think about it and to discuss it. I should like a public discussion about it.
I see and have great sympathy with the objections raised by the Home Secretary. They are objections, as he will appreciate, which are going through my mind, too. Is it a deterrent? 'What are the risks of martyrdom? What are the consequences if there are more bombings before and after the death sentences are carried out and, most dreadful of all, what are the risks of hostages?
I merely say this: I should like at least a debate, and a public debate, upon this matter and, eventually, perhaps a debate in the House about it. For myself, my mind on this subject at present—as I say, once a devout antihanger—is now completely open, and I should like to be able to discuss the matter as much as possible.
I believe that there is a theory abroad that those who at the moment are sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, particularly for terrorist or political offences, are likely to be granted an amnesty within a few years. As far as I know the previous administration certainly gave no sort of undertaking and would give no sort of undertaking of that nature, and there is nothing of which

I know that justifies any sort of allegation being made against the present Government that any such amnesty has been or will be contemplated. I am sure that I shall get an assurance to that effect from the Solicitor-General, but it is worth having that worry removed from peoples' minds.
Quite apart from the problems or the risks of capital punishment, we must recognise that many people in this country have strong views about the enforcement of the rule of law and about sentencing and punishment generally. It is so easy to brush them aside as the "hanging brigade" or the "law and order lot" or the "typical Tory ladies". Those who seek to do that are deceiving themselves, because those views are not limited to these few groups. There is a general uneasiness in the country which goes across all classes or geographic boundaries. This unease is not just because of terrorism or crime generally, or vandalism and hooliganism. I suspect that people are now beginning to sense that the generally accepted rules of conduct are being deliberately flouted either for selfish reasons or because it is becoming fashionable to ridicule previously accepted standards and to encourage people in schools or universities, or elsewhere in adult societies, in action or behaviour which pays no regard to the duties owed to the community as a whole.
There have been one or two speeches today referring rather contemptuously to this side of the House wanting to impose rules or to make others conform. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) said in opening the debate, rights involve duties. A man cannot accept the rights of membership of a society without accepting the duties that go with it. There is a feeling that too many are now saying, or are thought to be saying, that they have the right to do this or that but that they owe nothing in return. That feeling is causing anxiety amongst our constituents. Let us face it, and every hon. Member should, because it is in our constituencies that this is being felt.
Frustration is a very unhappy feeling. We have all experienced it in a minor way while queueing up at traffic lights in the correct lane waiting to turn right.


The lights do not change long enough to let many cars filter right, and a couple of drivers come down the inside lane and cut across causing us to miss the lights. We are cross about it because we are frustrated in the same way as when people jump the queue for the bus. How much more frustrated are people, particularly when there is nothing they can do about it, when they see others taking unfair advantage of their power or their strength or showing a complete disregard for any sort of consideration for the rest of the community?
I suppose one is then put in the position of asking how to establish a greater respect for the law. Many suggestions have been made and I do not consider that those I put forward are the only ones or necessarily the right ones. They are worth consideration, however. Firstly, those in authority, either in politics such as in this House, or in Government, or in any position of authority—even a sister in a hospital—must use their power responsibly. Secondly, there must be no support from those in authority for those who act illegally. If a man or a group act illegally, there must be no sitting on the fence, no speaking with two voices, but an immediate and proper condemnation or that illegal action.
Thirdly, those who flout the law, whether by fraud—the hon. Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Mr. Lee) said that the rate of fraud was increasing—or mugging on the Underground, of which my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Darwen (Mr. Fletcher-Cooke) spoke, must be made more afraid of prosecution and conviction. Even the minor offence—the pickpocketing, the pushing about, the shoplifting in a shop where there is not a big turnover—can cause enormous distress and harm. All hon. Members are agreed that we must have a better and more efficient police force and a better Fraud Squad. The Fraud Squad is extremely efficient but is grossly understaffed and has far to much work to do. It is a part of the Metropolitan Police and the City Police for which I have had the greatest admiration in my professional capacity.
Fourthly—it is certainly not my last suggestion, but it is the last one about which I wish to tell the House tonight—those who are about to act impetuously or selfishly for their own purposes should

pause and think how their intended action will affect their neighbour. They must realise that their neighbour is also the community. We used to think about this. Politicians always claim that they do. If we could restore the idea that before one took an action that appeared to be right for oneself, because one was cross or felt let down or for some other reason, one stopped and thought how it would affect one's neighbour and everyone else, that might well have a dramatic effect on re-establishing respect for the law.
Respect for the law must be re-established, because if we do not re-establish it, if it is eventually lost, so is our way of life, and eventually the worst consequence of all will follow—democracy will be lost.

9.33 p.m.

The Solicitor-General (Mr. Peter Archer): Irrespective of the quality of the debate, I believe that debates of this kind can be valuable—that is, debates in which we discuss not one specific matter but a whole spectrum of matters, because it is suggested that they conform with a general pattern, and so we are led to examine what characteristics they have in common, as a guide to formulating a consistent policy applicable to a number of situations.
But it is a method which calls for care and self-discipline. It can lead to broad generalisations that are wholly unsupported by evidence or experience. It can lead to misleading analogies and somewhat doctrinaire pronouncements. To point out that two situations are similar in a particular respect may be unhelpful if the differences outweigh the similarities. We have heard such examples in this debate. To suggest, as I think the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) did, that the deliberate planting of a bomb to kill or maim innocent bystanders, including children, is similar in kind to refusing to implement the Housing Finance Act, or to being ill-mannered, is to display a distorted perspective.
The debate has fallen into three parts, which I believe are separate—the concept of respect for the law, the question of indiscriminate terrorism, and the other specific matters raised during the debate. I shall deal with the three parts in reverse order.
It was suggested that one part of this general syndrome is violent demonstrations. I say at once that there is no sympathy on this side of the House for the use of violence to make a case, or for any action to endanger police or participants or non-participating members of the public. We believe that it is not only wrong but counter-productive, because it loses the sympathy of the public. It is right to pay tribute to the restraint and good temper normally shown by the police on occasions when this kind of incident has taken place.
But let us beware lest we allow our reaction to violence to extend to the right to demonstrate itself. My hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer), in a thoughtful speech, pointed out that there is a right to state a case forcefully and to take reasonable and lawful steps to draw attention to what one is saying. That right is precious in this country and we should be careful lest, in the name of public order, we silence arguments of which we happen to disapprove. It is significant that the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East referred constantly to the "far Left". I deplore violence whether it comes from Left or Right. I uphold the right lawfully to make a case whether it be from the Right or the Left.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Loughlin) and my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Cunningham) spoke of the police disciplinary procedure. This is perhaps another example of the way we have to maintain a balance. The police need powers to combat crime. They need our support, our understanding and our sympathy. They need our recognition, and the tributes paid to them today are well merited. But to carry the argument to its illogical conclusion would be to replace an escalation in crime with a police State.
My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury pointed out that there are occasions when the conduct of the police is open to criticism. We must not appear to fall over ourselves to accept evidence against one group, while closing our minds to any allegations against the other. Neither of my hon. Friends will expect me to comment on the particular cases they cited. But if we appear not to recognise the fact that there can be

mistakes on both sides we shall leave a sense of grievance among groups which might otherwise play a part in the enforcement of law and order.
The third general matter was mentioned by the hon. Member for Western Isles (Mr. Stewart). He spoke of the need for a return to moral standards. I echo that, and I try to implement it, on occasion, by appearing in Methodist pulpits, but I hope that he was not suggesting that it can be achieved substantially by legislation. I hope that we shall never see a "Ministry of Moral Regeneration". The hon. Gentleman's speech bears out the distinction between what can be achieved by governmental action, and what ought not even to be attempted.
On that subject I think that the right hon. Member for Leeds. North-East blamed juvenile delinquency as such on bad homes. Of course, sometimes a bad home is a factor. But it would be unfair to suggest that every parent whose child ever committed an offence had provided a bad home. There is no one reason for juvenile delinquency. There is no one reason why people commit crimes.
I turn now to the second part of the debate—the incidence of indiscriminate violence. On one matter there is no dispute among us. We are all horrified at the kind of outrage such as the recent incident at the Tower of London. It was both wicked and pointless. It bore no relation to any objective which the perpetrators may wish to achieve. It will not make us any more ready to find a political solution to the problems of Ireland. We are already desperately anxious to do that. If the prospect of finding a political solution depended upon dedicated anxiety to find one, it would have been found long ago. This kind of action at the Tower of London will merely lead to an escalation of the hatred and intolerance which afflicts that unhappy country.
So we agree on the premise. What is not self-evident is that any one conclusion follows in relation to penal policy. Of course we are all anxious, when we read of such outrages, to make helpful suggestions, and when none springs to mind it is natural to call on a substitute for a constructive suggestion by demanding the harshest punishment for the perpetrators that human imagination can


devise. The arguments on capital punishment have been fully rehearsed in the debate. I do not propose to repeat them all. It may be that on some other occasion we shall have a debate entirely devoted to that subject.
It is an emotional subject, and both sides of the House recognise that it is not enough to say that a demand for criminal blood is a natural reaction. What is important is to make a diagnosis and to consider an effective answer. The hon. Members for Harrow, West (Mr. Page) and Halesowen and Stourbridge (Mr. Stokes) said that they were speaking for their constituents, and claimed to tell us what they were saying. They might have represented them more helpfully—admittedly they had to get their remarks into a speech dealing with other subjects—if they had explained the reasons why their constituents were saying this.
It is not enough, as the hon. Member for Harrow, West said, to suggest that if we had lost a close friend or relative we would react in that way. Probably we would. What is required of us is the saving of life and limb in the future. It is not enough to say that making that kind of demand makes us feel better. We are here to protect the victims of possible future outrages by establishing a connection between what we propose and the results we seek to achieve. It is not self-evident that the answer to mindless violence is more mindless violence. The hon. and learned Member for Wimbledon (Sir M. Havers) asked for an assurance that at least while the question of a possible return to capital punishment remains in its present state there is no question of an amnesty for any class of terrorist. I give that assurance without any reservations.
Obviously there are a number of suggestions for other effective action. One such way would be by increasing the detection rate, and the security precautions. The hon. Member for Antrim, South (Mr. Molyneaux) cited a case where it appears that the security precautions left something to be desired. I cannot comment on that case, not having shared the hon. Member's disturbing experience. But the Government have taken a step to deal with this already because we have introduced the Policing of Airports Bill, which would give to the Secretary of State the

power to designate airports so that security would be in the hands of the regular police force in place of private forces. Manchester has not yet been designated, but this is clearly a step in the right direction.
Another constructive suggestion made by many hon. Members involved the speeding up of terrorist trials. The most effective method of doing this is to provide more courtrooms. It is hoped that by the end of next year 14 more criminal courtrooms will be provided in London. I agree with the hon. and learned Member for Wimbledon, who said that a means of providing additional security could be the issuing of passes for Members, though on the converse side of the coin there would be the inconvenience which certain people would suffer in consequence.

Mr. John Page: Has the hon. and learned Gentleman any suggestions for ways in which the trials of terrorists could be speeded up, or is there no such inkling of this in his mind?

The Solicitor-General: If the hon. Gentleman means that the trials themselves are taking too long, I must say that I doubt very much whether that is a serious public mischief. It is certainly not one which in my view would justify the abolition of jury trials, particularly for such serious offences and particularly if the hon. Gentleman is suggesting a return to capital punishment for such offences.
I will not rehearse the arguments for and against treating terrorism as a special category, except to say that if ever it is so treated, I hope that the definition will not include an element of political offences. It would be wrong to involve a court in an inquiry into the political motivation of some act. But I will comment on the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Mr. Lee) who spoke of treating international terrorism as a special category and for the particular purposes which he mentioned.
First, I agree with what my hon. Friend said, that all of us have an obligation to denounce terrorism without the introduction of double standards. Terrorism by those whose causes we approve is as deplorable as terrorism by our political opponents, and that goes for all of us. But as to my hon. Friend's suggestion of outlawry, as a possible solution I think that would require a great deal of very


careful thought. I understand that the proposal was for international outlawry, but I would hesitate to approve what would amount to a licence to kill and in certain circumstances could introduce lynch law. There are converse arguments, of course, which we can deploy more fully on another occasion.
Shortly after the war there were serious international discussions for an international criminal court, and perhaps we ought to recognise that the international community acting in concert is possibly the only entity which can produce an effective answer to international terrorism of this kind.

Mr. Lee: Do I understand by that, something on the lines of the international tribunal at Nuremburg, but on a permanent basis?

The Solicitor-General: That was what was being suggested in the years immediately following the war. Of course, there are countries where terrorism and contempt for the law come not from protestors but from the Government, and there we can see what everyone in this House accepts, I think—that enforcement of the law is the ordinary person's safeguard against tyranny. I rejoice with the people of Greece, who have reason to know who suffers when the law is reduced to silence.
I now turn to the question of respect for the law. This is another topic on which dogmatism is perhaps a trap where any of us may regret generalisations which go too wide. If I may introduce a partisan element, in 1969, when local education authorities were required to submit schemes for comprehensive education, my recollection is that it was not from Conservative Members that we were lectured on the importance of local authorities respecting the law. As the hon. and learned Member for Wimbledon pointed out, this is a field in which, whoever is in government, a great deal depends upon consent. I doubt whether any hon. Member would maintain that the obligation to respect the law necessarily overrides every other moral obligation in all circumstances. If it did, the case would have been established that the war criminals at Nuremburg committed their atrocities according to the Nazi legal system.

Mr. Redmond: The right hon. Gentleman said that in 1969 the law required comprehensive schools. Surely it was a circular, not a law? The law was never passed in this House.

The Solicitor-General: What was required was the submission of schemes for comprehensive schools, and there were certainly pronouncements from a number of local authorities, which simply said that whatever the law might ordain they would not comply. But I think we are really spending too much time on this. On another occasion I shall be quite prepared to debate this at some length with hon. Gentlemen opposite.

Mr. David Lane: I happened to be on the Standing Committee in which the then Government lost the clause which would have made this compulsory. The right hon. Gentleman is inaccurate.

The Solicitor-General: Certainly the hon. Gentleman must recollect occasions when a number of members of local authorities—I can recollect some in my own area—were saying that whatever the law might require they would not comply, and I did not hear corresponding denunciations from the opposite benches.
To return to what I was saying, I was privileged to hold office for many years in Amnesty International. More than one of the persons adopted by that movement had admittedly transgressed the law of their State because they believed it was their moral duty to do so. In the particular circumstances of those cases, I do not believe that any hon. Member would have condemned them. But, of course, that is an argument which should be used only with circumspection and much heart-searching. I refer to it only to show that there is no simple dogmatic principle which governs every case.

Mr. Fletcher-Cooke: Surely there is an enormous distinction between a lawbreaker in a dictatorship and a lawbreaker in a democracy? Most of those good and noble souls whom the hon. and learned Gentleman has been looking after have been suffering from tyranny.

The Solicitor-General: Had the hon. and learned Gentleman permitted me another moment, he would have realised that he had anticipated what I proposed


to say. Incidentally, I hope that the expression "good and noble souls" was not intended other than sincerely. Those are people for whom we have great admiration.
It is true that one important element in making the decision whether one is under an obligation to comply with the law is the question of the way in which that law is made and what procedures are available for altering it. Of course I accept that, and I would make that point again and again. It is an important element, but I do not believe that it is conclusive in all circumstances. If a democratically elected assembly were to pass a statute requiring me to practise human sacrifice, I would not regard it as incumbent upon me to comply, and I think that the hon. and learned Gentleman would join me. I agree that the circumstances in which that applies are few and exceptional.
We are not, on the Government side of the House, likely to underestimate the importance of respect for the law. I joined the Labour movement because I was sickened by the rat race I saw around me, commercial, industrial and social. The philosophy seemed to be, "They should take who have the power, and they should keep who can". Always it was the little guy who lost out. The alternative was a system of priorities on the basis of a rational consideration of need. Law is the opposite of a jungle. For me, law and Socialism are on the same side. When it is said that we should encourage people to respect the law, no one could agree more enthusiastically than I do, and I believe that my hon. Friends join me in that.

Mr. Ancram: The hon. and learned Gentleman said a moment ago that if he disagreed with the law he would not feel bound by it. Is he seriously suggesting that if Opposition Members do not like a law which is passed by his Government they need not obey that law, and vice versa?

The Solicitor-General: I was saying only that there is not one simple dogma that applies to every situation. If the law required the hon. Gentleman to practise human sacrifice, I doubt whether he would take so simple a view as he appears to be taking.
I have said that we on the Government side accept as fully as anyone the importance of respect for the law. I agree that one consequence is that we should watch carefully what we say in case our words may be taken, in or out of context, to encourage anyone to doubt that. Two other consequences also follow. First, any Government are unwise if they impose upon a substantial proportion of the public restrictions or burdens which they not only resent, but which they sincerely believe they have a right to resent. The problems of the Industrial Relations Act and the Clay Cross situation are the direct consequences of the previous Government's disdain for that principle. The hon. Member for Cleveland and Whitby (Mr. Brittan) referred to people who had previously been law-abiding citizens feeling driven to break the law. That is precisely the situation which was brought about.
Secondly, many ordinary people see the law as a series of prohibitions which impinge upon what they might otherwise wish to do, and which no one troubles to explain to them. If they could think of the law and lawyers as instruments for protecting them from unjust landlords, from unfair traders, from officials who sometimes make mistakes in calculating social welfare benefits, if, as my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley said, they felt that they could have ready access to legal advice, and if they felt that the law was sometimes on their side, they might be less tempted to think in terms of confrontation. We are concerned that that should happen within the foreseeable future, and I know we have the support of the legal profession generally.
Reference was made to the Solicitors (Amendment) Bill. We are grateful for the co-operation we received from the hon. and learned Member for Wimbledon and his colleagues on that Bill. It is an important step towards making ordinary people feel that the legal system which we are asking them to respect is their legal system.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Preston, South (Mr. Thorne) pointed out, law and order cannot be insulated from social policy. They are all part of the same process. In maintaining law and order, in combating terrorism and in conducting the day-to-day business of the courts, any authority must rely on the


co-operation of the public, in reporting any suspicions to the police, in responding to programmes like "Police 5", in coming forward as witnesses and in being prepared to spend sometimes long weeks serving on juries. If that co-operation is to be encouraged people must believe the laws are fair; help tendered to the police must be welcomed and seen to be welcomed. Witnesses appearing in court must be treated with courtesy. The law must be seen as a social service and the people must believe that it is their legal system.
I believe that the ordinary people of this country are basically law-abiding. I believe that they want to respect the law and that they will respect the law if they believe that the law respects them.

Mr. James Dunn (Lord Commissioner of the Treasury): I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Orders of the Day — PASSES FOR MEMBERS

9.56 p.m.

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Edward Short): I beg to move,
That Members and Officers of the House, the staff of the House and all persons who require to enter the precincts regularly on official duty or on the business of the House shall produce a photographic identification pass, provided by the authorities of the House, whenever so requested by the police officers or officials of either House responsible for security within the precincts or in the other parliamentary buildings in the vicinity; that the authorities of the House prepare and distribute such passes; and that the authorities of the House provide similar passes for Members' spouses, if so requested.
This motion invites the House to agree that all Members of the House, and others who need to come here regularly, should carry a photographic identification pass and should show it to the police upon request. The motion would implement the Fifth Report of the Services Committee. Such passes have been for some time in use here by officers of the House and some others regularly employed here. But some Members—and others—do not yet have them. Members' spouses will be provided with photographic passes on request. The existing position has placed the police and the

security staff in a very difficult position. It is often assumed, perhaps more often by older Members, that most, if not all, Members are readily recognisable by the police and staff of the House; and that there is, therefore, no need for formal identification procedures of this kind.
I have no doubt that there are in fact many of those who serve us here who rightly pride themselves upon knowing by sight the great majority of Members. But this is obviously not true of more recent recruits to the House, and in the light of recent events I do not think we can continue to rely any longer on this assumption, however pleasant it may be.
I do not expect any hon. Member will positively welcome the change proposed in this motion. But, however unwelcome, I believe it is a necessary change if security here is to be made more effective. Unless the police and security officials have the right to challenge everyone here without exception, and to ask them to provide some proof of their identity, there is obviously a glaring loophole in our precautions.
The Services Committee has discussed this matter and has taken the view that photographic passes are the most convenient way of proving one's identity. I share that view. I am sure that the police and the security officials will do all they can to minimise inconvenience to hon. Members.
Once everyone who comes here regularly has a photographic pass, it will be much easier for the police to check the entry of casual staff, of whom there are large numbers here, and any others who do not have them.
The Services Committee has also made further recommendations for improving security in the House in their Sixth Report. In particular, it has made recommendations to restrict the use of the entrances to the House, other than St. Stephens, to those in possession of valid passes. This clearly raises a number of difficult, very important and possibly contentious issues. I think it would be better not to come to conclusions on these matters this evening.
Earlier this afternoon I told the House that the Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Mr. Starritt, had agreed to make an assessment of the security of the Palace of Westminster, in


consultation with all concerned. I hope the House will agree to await his report.

It being Ten o'clock, Mr. Speaker interrupted the Business.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,
That the Motion relating to Passes for Members etc., and the Consideration of Lords Amendments to the Housing Bill and the Housing (Scotland) Bill may be proceeded with at this day's Sitting, though opposed, until any hour.—[Mr. James A. Dunn.]

Orders of the Day — PASSES FOR MEMBERS

Mr. Edward Short: In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity of expressing, on behalf of the House, appreciation of the speed and thoroughness with which the Services Committee has examined these issues in the general interests of the House. I feel sure that Mr. Starritt will wish to take very full account of the valuable work it has done.
The present motion is likely to be the first of a series of measures tightening up procedures in this field. It is, however, I believe, an important and necessary one, and I commend it to the House.

10.2 p.m.

Mr. Patrick Cormack: Everybody will be grateful to the right hon. Gentleman both for what he has said and for the promise he gave earlier this afternoon in his statement.
I wish to make two points. The first concerns Members' wives. It would be a very good thing if all Members' wives were asked to have the kind of photographic pass to which the right hon. Gentleman referred. Hon. Members are to have them and it would seem sensible that our wives, or husbands as the case may be, should also have these passes.
My second point, although it is obviously premature to come to any conclusion on this, particularly in the light of the announcement made this afternoon, is that the time is possibly approaching when we must consider the credentials of everybody who presents himself at this Palace. It is relatively easy for people to come to St. Stephen's

entrance and to say that they have an appointment with a Member of Parliament. It is equally easy for the hon. Member, if that is true, to furnish the necessary letter. Possibly the time has come when people should be required to furnish some evidence of the fact that they have an appointment with a Member.
I say this with extreme reluctance because obviously one of the great traditions is that we all of us, wherever we sit, are accessible to our constituents and they have a right to come to see us. Nevertheless, we have an overriding duty to preserve the security of this place because in preserving this we are also preserving our democratic way of life. I hope, therefore, that when the security adviser examines this he will look most seriously at this suggestion.
I would ask the right hon. Gentleman again to give consideration to the question of passes for Members' wives or husbands. I believe that the whole House will be grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for what he has done and for what he said this afternoon.

10.4 p.m.

Mr. John Mendelson: I wish to make one point on this as you seem to indicate, Mr. Speaker, that we are moving rather quickly away from it. It is a general caveat on the whole tendency that we are now accepting. There is a clear case for protecting factories, public buildings, law courts and wherever people are working—and the House will know that I am never in any way critical of those who want to provide the maximum defence and security against criminal gangs who are operating under the false pretences of being engaged in politics when they simply endanger innocent lives.
I have often spoken against the IRA and the extreme paramilitary organisation of Protestants. I am now in no way amending anything I have said on that subject. But this is the House of Commons. It would not be right to treat this place in the same way as we treat all the other institutions I have mentioned. It is not just an empty phrase. The House of Commons derives its meaning from what happens in the Lobby as well as in the process of passing legislation in the Chamber to which we attach the greatest importance.
I do not believe the introduction of new measures which might discourage access to the House would be right or in the tradition of the way in which democratic institutions in this country have grown up and are a model to the world. There are many people who have not the time to make arrangements to write to see hon. Members in advance. This is well known, but it should be said. People wishing to see their representatives often write to us and when we reply we tell them to show the letter to the policeman at the entrance. That is normal practice, and was the practice even before the recent events. However, a number of our constituents have not time to write in and we deliberately encourage such people if they want to see us. This happens when they have something which they think to be important to take up with their Member of Parliament. We should be most careful not to upset that arrangement.
I am not a member of the Services Committee and have no knowledge of the internal discussions which have taken place on this topic. Obviously every member of that Committee will be aware of what I am saying and its relevance, but I feel that it should be said in public and should be considered carefully before decisions are made. Anything that would have the slightest tendency to discourage people to come to the House of Commons would be a triumph for terrorist gangs. It would be taken as showing to some of their leaders that, if they carry on long enough, they might have an effect even on this House of Parliament. That would be an evil result. I have always been against negotiation with leaders of terrorist gangs and I have taken this view with various Governments over the years. Equally, I am bitterly opposed to taking any action which might allow the terrorists to feel that their efforts are beginning to have an effect.
Of course, what I am saying involves certain risks. We must make a distinction between taking risks for ourselves and allowing other people to be put at risk. This is one reason why I am not categoricaly opposing the new proposals, because obviously, as we know from the recent tragic events, there are irresponsible people who give instructions to make murderous attacks. On the occasion of the Tower bomb it was not an attack against politicians or political leaders, but

it was an attack on ordinary people. For those people there must be special protection and we must be careful to provide it. As far as we are concerned we must take considerable risks here and in other places. I think that must be agreed among us and I am sure it is not controversial.
I do not regard the showing of a pass as of any real consequence. I do not believe the people who are responsible for undertaking these long-prepared attacks will be mistaken for Members of Parliament. I do not think that the change in the system is very relevant, and in certain quarters it may be said, "Look at the House of Commons. Its Members are beginning to show the signs of wear and tear which we the terrorist leaders desire."
I say no more on this topic. I agree that these measures need not be decided immediately but can be considered later. I feel that the general purpose of the strategy in this respect should be pointed out, subject to the detailed points which my right hon. Friend has made.

10.10 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Bottomley: I rise only to assure my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone (Mr. Mendelson) that every member of the Services Committee will echo his sentiments. However, I am sure that he will agree that anything that can be done to stop these foul attempts by evildoers to harm this institution is worth doing.
I remind my hon. Friend that we are concerned not only with Members of Parliament. There are 2,500 people who use the Commons and the surroundings, and the recent incident illustrates the perils which they face. We are ccncerned about their welfare, too.

10.11 p.m.

Mr. Robert Adley: I agree with almost all that the hon. Member for Penistone (Mr. Mendelson) said. I have had one of these passes for some time. In case any hon. Member has doubts about their value, I can assure the House that they are better than credit cards.
I wish to ask the Leader of the House one question. We understand the reasons why we are to be required to carry passes. I echo what the hon. Member for Penistone said. Will the Leader of


the House take note of the view of most hon. Members that we do not want to take steps which will make it more difficult for our constituents to visit us here, especially those without appointments? It is very often people in distress who come here at short notice, not knowing where else to turn. I shall be grateful for the right hon. Gentleman's assurance that there is no intention of making this the first of a number of steps.

10.12 p.m.

Mr. Edward Short: With the leave of the House, perhaps I might make a few brief comments in reply to the debate.
I agree with all that my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone (Mr. Mendelson) said. In all our security arrangements it is a matter of holding a balance between adequate security and

reasonable access to a free Parliament of Members and constituents alike. This should be borne in mind when we consider security. If we sacrifice that free access, we sacrifice something very valuable. I hope that our security arrangements will never have to go that far.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,
That Members and Officers of the House, the staff of the House and all persons who require to enter the precincts regularly on official duty or on the business of the House shall produce a photographic identification pass, provided by the authorities of the House, whenever so requested by the police officers or officials of either House responsible for security within the precincts or in the other parliamentary buildings in the vicinity; that the authorities of the House prepare and distribute such passes; and that the authorities of the House provide similar passes for Members' spouses, if so requested.

Orders of the Day — HOUSING BILL

Lords Amendments further considered.

10.13 p.m.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Where do we go from here? Is there any suggestion that the amendments should be taken together? That was the idea last night.

The Minister for Housing and Construction (Mr. Reginald Freeson): If it will help, Mr. Speaker, since there may be one or two matters which hon. Members will wish to query, perhaps it will be in order to consider the amendments by dealing with the Bill part by part.
Accordingly, I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendments to Part I of the Bill.

Question put and agreed to.

Mr. George Cunningham: On a point of order—

Mr. Speaker: Order. Is this on Part I? With respect, the hon. Member is too late. I have put the Question. It has been agreed to.

Mr. Cunningham: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The difficulty is that the amendments are listed not according to the Parts of the Bill but by numbers. If an hon. Member wishes to raise a point, say, on Lords Amendment No. 84, how is he to know when that is reached? I have spent the past two hours looking at the Bill, and hon. Members will appreciate how difficult it is. Perhaps we might be told the numbers of the amendments involved in each Part of the Bill so that any hon. Member who wishes to raise a point on a specific amendment may know when it has been reached.

Mr. Speaker: That seems to be a very reasonable point of order. We have dealt with Part I. When we come to Part II perhaps the Minister will give some indication of the amendments involved.

Mr. Freeson: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in their said Amendments Nos. 1 to 9 in Part II of the Bill.

Mr. Paul Tyler: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. My copy of the Bill, which is difficult to read, suggests

that Part II comprises Clauses 13 to 27. I find it rather difficult to understand how the Minister can be moving Part II when Clauses 1 to 9—[HON. MEMBERS: "Amendments."]—are not listed in that way.

Mr. Speaker: Perhaps the Minister will assist the House.

Mr. Freeson: I have my amendments numbered, and the way in which I moved the amendments was in accordance with the numbering in my papers. I can do no better than that.

Mr. Michael Morris: May I help the Liberal Party by giving the hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. Tyler) a volume that is numbered?

10.15 p.m.

Mr. Tyler: I refer to the new clause after Clause 26 which, I think, is numbered No. 6. My pencil mark, which has been much photocopied, is not easy to read. I refer to the new clause which appears on page 6. It is intended to follow Clause 26 which is in Part II of the Bill. It refers to the disclosure of interest by members of committees of registered 1965 Act associations. I should be grateful if the Minister would indicate whether I am in the right part of the Bill.

Mr. Freeson: I do not understand how Clause 26 can be in page 6 of the Bill. I find it difficult to make a quick reference on that basis.

Mr. Tyler: The paging in my volume does not seem to have any numbering. All I can do to identify the place is to point out that at the top of the page it says:
Insert the following new clause after Clause 26.
There is no number in my volume. [HON. MEMBERS: "Amendment No. 9."] I apologise to you, Mr. Speaker, and to the House, but my volume does not have that number. Perhaps at this stage I should make the point that last night we were extremely grateful to the Leader of the House and to you, Mr. Speaker. I speak on behalf of other hon. Members who referred to the difficulties involved. It was difficult for back benchers to find their way through the papers. We have had the advantage of 24 hours to study the papers.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Robert Mellish): It is Amendment No. 9.

Mr. Tyler: I am told that I am referring to Amendment No. 9.

Mr. Speaker: It is a pleasure to see that Whips are sometimes of some use.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Gerald Kaufman): To the great astonishment of myself and the House, I think that I am with the hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. Tyler) and that I understand what he is asking. If he will be kind enough to put his question it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that we may be able to help.

Mr. Tyler: I am grateful to the Minister. I have had the assistance of the Government Whip but I still cannot find Amendment No. 9. My point is that it is difficult to identify what exactly a direct or indirect interest is in a contract. As I have declared in the many debates that we have had on the Bill, I have an interest as an adviser to the Royal Institute of British Architects. Solicitors architects and surveyors are very often members of housing associations and they may have an interest as professional advisers on a contract. Is that a direct or an indirect interest? This is an important point, because clearly we are introducing a new element into the way in which housing associations will operate. I should be grateful if the Minister could give some indication whether in those circumstances members should declare an interest.

Mr. Patrick Cormack: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I think everybody in the House appreciates the enormous lengths to which the Government have gone to provide us with papers. I hope that between now and the resumption of our sittings in October we will not allow this situation regarding the printing of Parliamentary papers to continue. [HON. MEMBERS: "It is all over.") By interruption I am told that it is all over. If that solves the difficulty, that is fine. We must have our papers properly printed. If that had been the position tonight the difficulties which the hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. Tyler) has raised would not have arisen.

Mr. Speaker: That is rather a different matter.

Mr. Freeson: I am sure that the news will bring a smile to some faces anyway. Perhaps I can make it clear that the clause requires a member of a committee of a registered 1965 Act association—that is an association registered under the Industrial and Provident Societies Act 1965—and also of a housing corporation to disclose to his fellow committee members any interest that he may have in any contract that the association has entered or proposes to enter, and makes it an offence for him not to do so. I hope that that will satisfy the hon. Gentleman.

Question put and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords amendments agreed to.

Mr. Freeson: I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Lords in their Amendments Nos. 18–41 to Part IV of the Bill.

Mr. George Cunningham: I wish to speak in relation to Amendment No. 31—new clause "Notification of notices to quit and disposals of housing accommodation, etc."—although there are other amendments relative to the matter I have in mind. It is not a specific point. It relates to priority neighbourhoods generally. Priority neighbourhoods are a new concept provided for in a number of the amendments. We were told on Second Reading of the Bill that the Government intended to bring forward a new concept, which was then spoken of in terms of safeguard areas or control areas additional to the housing action areas originally provided for in the Bill and in the precursor of the Bill, the Housing and Planning Bill. However, it was not possible to move that proposal in Standing Committee in this House and it was only in the House of Lords that this concept was finally inserted in the Bill.
The proposal for the new priority neighbourhoods is an important matter. Why priority neighbourhoods should be called neighbourhoods and action areas called areas I do not know. It is merely part of the confusion which is littered through the Bill and illustrates the woolly thinking behind the Bill which I remind the House was not a Labour Bill but a Conservative Bill which was left on our


doorstep. Instead of strangling it at birth we picked it up and adopted it.
It would be useful to have an indication from the Government of the case for these priority neighbourhoods. My right hon. Friend the present Secretary of State for the Environment, in the Second Reading debate on the Housing and Planning Bill—the precursor of this Bill—in the previous Parliament spoke strongly and rightly of the undesirability of creating a patchwork solution to the problem of housing in stress areas. He thought it a pity that the previous Government should be creating housing action areas in addition to the general improvement areas. Now we are to have general improvement areas, housing action areas and priority neighbourhoods. Different powers will be applied in each of those areas or neighbourhoods. A general improvement area may not be contiguous to a housing action area but on the other hand we cannot have a priority neighbourhood not contiguous to a housing action area. My borough of Islington will find it impossible to draw the lines in relation to the areas. There will be higher improvement grants available in some districts within these areas as against other districts which will not qualify. Boroughs will have to say to some ratepayers, "You cannot have a higher rate of improvement grant because you are not in a housing action area or a priority neighbourhood".
Local authorities will find it impossible to draw any rational line to reflect these areas. The reason that I put my views on this matter on record when this new concept is introduced into the Bill is that the Government will shortly regret having accepted this patchwork approach to the problems of distress areas. I hope that the Minister can give us the justification for the priority neighbourhoods and confirm that if after, say, a year, it looks as if there is something in my criticisms, the Government will not feel that they have to stick to the legislation which we are so hurriedly passing but will be prepared to come back to the crossroads and go up the other road, which would mean giving local authorities general powers which they will be able to exercise anywhere in their areas according to their concept of what is required.

Mr. Freeson: To take the last point first, there is no shortage of general

powers for local authorities in housing and related matters. What has been missing over many years is a coherent approach, especially in the older, twilight areas. Having listened carefully to my hon. Friend, not for the first time on this subject, I believe that that is what he seeks to establish. That approach is to treat these areas as a whole, rather than in the fragmented fashion in which we have treated them in the past—both Government and local government. There is no shortage of general powers. It is the way in which powers have been organised in the past which has shown what I consider to be a central failure of policy over many years.
I accept that the priority neighbourhood concept does not go far enough towards achieving the more coherent approach to tackling the older inner city areas, but, unlike my hon. Friend, I believe that it is a start. It would have been more desirable—here I think we are on common ground—had it been possible to start from scratch, to produce a more wide-ranging Bill to deal with urban renewal in a far more comprehensive and coherent way.
But we judged when we came to office that a long time had been spent in consultation with local authorities and housing associations, that people throughout the country had been waiting for some time for what was then called the Housing and Planning Bill and that it would have been wrong to delay taking action in this field for many more months while we studied the matter and then consulted upon our ideas about a different or more extensive Bill. This is why the Bill was introduced as an edited version of the last administration's Bill.
From the outset, I have tried to see how the original Bill could be recast in this one to introduce at least the beginnings of the more comprehensive approach which I wish both Government and local government to follow. It is a limited start, but it is the right one and if it is used properly the priority neighbourhood concept will produce the opposite of the fragmentary approach which my hon. Friend rightly criticises.
10.30 p.m.
I shall for a few moments explain how I visualise that working. We shall be considering the criteria for the establishment of such priority neighbourhoods,


the way in which they can best be organised and dealt with in some detail in due course, I hope not too long from now. There will be follow-up circular advice and personal contact between the Department and local authorities in order to get the concept moving.
Basically the Bill does two things. It enables local authorities to operate a notification procedure on property transactions which until now we had considered applied only to housing action areas, much more limited areas of our towns and cities. It does this on a much wider scale and it extends, although to a very limited degree, the basis of compulsory purchase orders where they are necessary in the old areas.
More than that, however, it will provide, in time—and this is where the follow-up work will have to be carefully prepared—a basis for local authorities, trying with our backing to integrate some of the separatist fragmentary action now taken on housing and urban matters within local and national Government. We want to get areas treated as neighbourhoods and communities rather than as different bits and pieces with individual problems.
This will require extensive and concerted use of existing powers as well as the new powers of local authorities in these definable areas. It will in time lead, I hope, to a much greater integration of different kinds of service in the old areas going well beyond limited matters of housing with which the Bill and my wing of the Department are strictly concerned.
There could be consultation with the Department of Education and Science at national level. There could be local consultations between education and housing authorities and planning and social service departments. A good deal of work is being done on this in local government. Urban studies are already in hand. The object is to move increasingly towards what I have described as the "total approach" to the treatment of old areas. The move will be away from the vertical, fragmentary approach of the past, instead treating housing, schooling, amenities and general environmental matters, and social services in an interrelated fashion, properly programmed for neighbourhoods. "Neighbourhood" is the

correct term, because we are trying to move towards the concept of community action as distinct from vertically separated services in local or national Government.
This is the beginning of something which, if followed through by local and central Government action, could produce a considerable challenge to politicians concerned with the problems of our older urban areas. It will provide an opportunity in time for a genuine community-based approach rather than an approach based on separate services. Even if my hon. Friend does not agree that this will achieve what I am suggesting, I hope that he will agree that we have the right objective. I am confident that this method can and will work.

Mr. Graham Page: The House is grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his very clear explanation of the priority neighbourhoods. Am I right in thinking that the local authorities can themselves declare a priority neighbourhood without any interference from central Government, that it is for them to decide and not for the Secretary of State to designate?

Mr. Freeson: It will not be for the Secretary of State to designate. We shall issue guidance and criteria, and there will be constant follow-up work. As was originally visualised, even in the previous Government's Bill in connection with housing action areas, where information is given to the Secretary of State which leads him to believe, after due consideration, that it was inappropriate to declare a priority neighbourhood or a housing action area, he will be able, as it were, to undeclare it.
I also visualise as the priority neighbourhood concept gets under way areas in which local authorities, with our backing, can programme a series of housing action areas and general improvement areas over a period of years, or tranches of years, instead of just picking bits of areas at random, as has been constantly the practice, so that we move from one point to another on a district basis, trying to relate what we are doing in an integral way, as I have described.

Question put and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords Amendments agreed to.

Mr. Freeson: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in Lords Amendments Nos. 69–80 in Part VIII.

Mr. Christopher Woodhouse: I should like to say something, and ask a question, about Lords Amendment No. 78, which introduces a revised version of the new clause amending the Leasehold Reform Act 1967. I warmly welcome the clause, which was introduced in its original form in Committee by my hon. Friend the Member for Homsey (Mr. Rossi). It carries out an undertaking given by the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, from the Opposition Front Bench in this House as long ago as 1966. It is a belated amendment of a patent injustice in the 1967 Act, for which I have been campaigning for many years.
The clause raises the rateable value limits on the right of leasehold enfranchisement. It does not remove them, but at least it raises them to a level which will take care of all the many cases of long leaseholders in my constituency who have so far been debarred from enfranchisement.
For these reasons, I warmly welcome the new clause, but I have one question. What is the significance of the date 18th February 1966 in the new clause? It is not the same date as appeared in the original version of the new cuause as introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey in Standing Committee. If I may have an explanation of that date, I will not delay the House further.

Mr. Hugh Rossi: Perhaps I can help the House here. I believe that the distinction is that in the original new clause the date was the date of the White Paper which introduced the concept of leasehold reform, whereas the date which now appears is the date on which the Act became effective.

Mr. Tyler: I fear that my copy still does not have the number of the Lords amendment. It is new Clauses 102B, 102C, 102D and 102E to which I wish to draw attention. I think they immediately precede the new clause to which the hon. Member for Oxford (Mr. Woodhouse) referred, and deal with listed buildings subject to compulsory purchase orders. I think they constitute a

completely new element in the Bill which we did not discuss at any stage in this House.
If I am right, I hope that the Minister may be able to give us a little more guidance about the exact purpose of these new clauses. I have for many years been concerned about the apparent difficulties which local authorities find themselves in if they have a change of mind. It may be that these new provisions are simply designed to make it possible for them to deal with changes of mind.

Mr. Freeson: Did the hon. Gentleman indicate the number of the Lords amendment?

Mr. Tyler: I am sorry, but mine is an early edition of this document. I got it at 10.15 p.m. yesterday, only five minutes after it arrived. It is not numbered. It is on a page originally numbered 21, which has been crossed out, with the number 45 substituted.
Perhaps I may pay tribute to the compilers of this document. We all appreciate the extraordinary difficulties they have worked under. While last night I criticised the way in which the business had been brought forward to the House, I think that the physical compilation of this document is a marvellous work of art. I pay tribute to the way in which, under considerable strain, people responsible put this document together.
I now have a different copy, which the hon. Member for Hornsey (Mr. Rossi) has kindly supplied me with, but unless I am quite blind I cannot find a number on the amendment, but the page number is 45, containing new Clause 102B.

Mr. Michael Morris: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I believe we have already dealt with this amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Murton): Perhaps the hon. Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Morris) will not mind waiting a moment. Has the hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. Tyler) found his place now? It is Lords Amendment No. 70.

Mr. Kaufman: Although we are having some numerative trouble, perhaps I can endeavour, to the best of my limited ability, to assist the hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. Tyler) on the matter he is concerned about. It is a principle of some importance.

Mr. Michael Morris: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. If an item has been dealt with, it has gone; if it has not, it has not.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: It is within the group. We are dealing with it within the group. There is no objection to going backwards, if I may put it that way, provided we do not leave the group altogether.

Mr. Kaufman: I am somewhat astonished at this disharmony among the Opposition of national unity. The hon. Member for Bodmin and the hon. Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Morris) between them have a majority of 188. I should have thought that they should get together in their mutual interest rather than quarrel in this unseemly way.
10.45 p.m.
Perhaps I could revert to my attempt to explain the principle to the hon. Member for Bodmin. I had the opportunity of explaining this during Second Reading. We have the absurd position whereby local authorities can make compulsory purchase orders and go through all the procedures, after which some irresponsible citizen, such as myself, seeks to get buildings of architectural interest listed and succeeds in doing so.
This makes a nonsense of the compulsory purchase order because the local authority, even when it has had the order confirmed, cannot proceed sensibly with its planned redevelopment because of the listed buildings. I am happy to say that in my constituency my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State listed two admirable 17th century cottages which the Manchester City Council wished, most irresponsibly, to demolish. It was a particularly irresponsible act because they contained several very good Labour voters.
It seemed to us, and it was accepted by the House on Second Reading and by the Committee, that it was wise to give a local authority the chance to escape from the nonsense in which it had been placed through giving it a power to apply for the revocation of the compulsory purchase order. We decided that there should be a limited period from the time when the Act came into force because clearly if, after that time, there was no

such limit, all planning would be nonsense, blight would spread like a plague over our cities and no kind of urban planning would be possible.
We therefore decided to limit the revocation power to a period of three months I believe, after the Act came into force. That is the point of what we are trying to do. I hope that this makes matters clear to the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Tyler: Could the Minister make clear whether provision for public participation, as under the 1971 Act, apply in cases such as this? If there any change in the arrangements?

Mr. Kaufman: So far as I recall from my studies of the Bill there are no changes. There are no added powers for the public to take part. We do not provide any kind of new long-stop ability for the public to intervene after the Secretary of State had made his decision. This would make a nonsense of the Minister's decisions.

Mr. Graham Page: I am well aware of the difficulties here. Indeed I had experience of them on many occasions when I was a Minister, particularly in Manchester. The problems arise when the local authority or a private developer is hoping to proceed but at the last moment a building in the development area is listed and the whole development is brought to a standstill.
Would the hon. Gentleman give an assurance that it will still be possible to have second thoughts about this? Can he confirm that there is no obstruction in the Bill to listing at any time? Do the amendments give the local authority the ability to have second thoughts about compulsory purchases?
May I also ask the Minister about the clause headed "Compensation." I can not say that I have read it in detail. It is Amendment No. 75 on page 57. I am not quite certain where this comes into the scheme of the amendments ranging from Amendment No. 69 to Amendment No. 78. Evidently at some stage someone gets some compensation for the revocation of the compulsory purchase order or of the listing. I am not sure which it is. I hope that the hon. Member has some brief before him to deal with this. Until he nods I will go on talking.

Mr. Kaufman: We are in some difficulty with the numbering. Would the right hon. Gentleman be kind enough to repeat the numbers?

Mr. Graham Page: It is Amendment No. 75 on page 57. The marginal note is "Compensation". There are a lot of cross-references in the Clause, and I am not sure exactly who is getting compensation for what. I imagine that it has something to do with the cancellation of compensation upon revocation of an order. It may be that if a building is listed late in the process of development the local authority is to be relieved of the responsibility of paying compensation. Will that cause hardship to someone who has been inconvenienced by the imposition of a compulsory purchase order?

Mr. Kaufman: I give the right hon. Gentleman an immediate assurance on his first point. The provisions which we are inserting into the Bill will in no way interfere with the possibility of late listing. As a passionate lister, I would strongly disapprove of any such interference with the right to preserve historic buildings. Indeed, I wish that we could insert a further long-stop to allow second thoughts even after the Secretary of State has given his consent.
On the right hon. Gentleman's question about compensation, the aim is to pay a sum which meets the difference between the value of an unfit house and the market value which is appropriate to a house which is to be improved and not demolished.

Question put and agreed to.

Schedule 3

APPLICATION OF RENT ACT 1968 TO CERTAIN HOUSING ASSOCIATION TENANCIES

Mr. Freeson: I beg to move, That the House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendments Nos. 81 to 112.

Mr. George Cunningham: I disagreed a moment ago with the hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. Tyler) when he paid tribute to those who are responsible for producing the documents. I did not do so to pour criticism on the Government or the Leader of the House, as most hon. Mem

bers have done in the last few days. When there is a failure in the normal processes for producing the printed documents of the House, it is up to the House authorities, not the Government, to get this right, and the House authorities come under Mr. Speaker's authority. Far too much criticism has been directed to the Government, when the failure is a failure of the House authorities. I shall not proceed with that in case I should be out of order. We must take note of this for the future. We cannot have this kind of nonsense again. This is no way to pass legislation in anything except a banana republic.
I should like to mention the amendments which deal with the identity of landlords. I refer to Amendments Nos. 85, 86, 87 and 1:38. I wish to thank the Minister for the changes introduced following the discussion in Committee. So far as one can follow them from the documentation we have before us, they appear to meet the points which I raised on that occasion.
Secondly, Amendment No. 84, which deals with notices to quit, will provide that in future such notices must be in writing. It came as a surprise to me to know that one could have a notice to quit that was not in writing. We should surely for the future ensure that there is a statement to the recipient that the notice to quit is not immediately enforceable. Many tenants receiving notices to quit still believe that they must get out when the notice to quit expires. They should be told what is the law—namely, that they do not have to get out until a court gives an order for possession. It would be a natural thing for the notice to quit to contain a statement to that effect. If the recipient of the notice to quit is aware of his rights it does not matter, but many single people—for example, elderly women living on their own—need this measure of protection. We do not have notices to quit these days. We have notices of the beginning of a legal process. We should change the title and provide for this information to be attached to the notice to quit.

Mr. Rossi: It might help the hon. Gentleman to know that in the concluding stages of the Rent Bill Committee this morning my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. Allason) moved


an amendment precisely for the purposes mentioned by the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Cunningham). It asked for the notice to quit to be called a "Notice for variation of terms of tenancy". That was felt to be more consistent with the objective of those notices. That would have gone part of the way to meet the hon. Gentleman's point. But regrettably, like so many other useful amendments moved in Committee, that amendment did not find favour with Labour Members.

Mr. George Cunningham: People who receive a document calling itself a notice to quit at least know what those words mean, although now legally they are not a requirement to quit the premises. If people were served with a document calling itself a "Notice for variation of terms of tenancy", I do not think they would have the least idea what it was intended to mean. That does not go anywhere near as far as I suggest.

Mr. Cormack: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. A few moments ago, when Mr. Speaker was in the Chair, I raised a point of order arising from the confusion earlier on the printing of Parliamentary papers. In my point of order there was a sedentary interruption from the Government Front Bench to the effect that the problem was all settled. I understand, from inquiries outside the Chamber, that the problem is not settled and that we are still in the same position. I would ask you, Sir, to try to arrange through Mr. Speaker for the matter to be clarified fairly soon.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: That is a matter for another occasion. I think we should proceed with the business in hand.

Mr. James Allason: Before there is any criticism of my speech this morning, may I at least ask Labour Members to read it. If they do so, they will be moved to tears by the point I made.

Mr. Freeson: Having had experience of the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. Allason) in Committee on more than one Bill, I have from time to time been moved to tears—though perhaps not for the same reasons as he just expressed.
11.0 p.m.
May I first express the Government's appreciation for the thanks which my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Cunningham) expressed for seeking to meet the points which he raised in Committee? We accept their validity.
As for the further point which my hon. Friend has just made, I agree entirely. I hope that it may be possible, though I foresee difficulties, to formulate a model notice to quit at some time in the future which will ensure that the basic information about legal rights is indicated on the notice or the papers which have to be submitted in writing to the tenant concerned.
I do not want to give any commitment at this stage. I want to examine my hon. Friend's suggestion a good deal further before doing that. However, my hon. Friend will see from the clause that subsection (2) in page 74 says that the term "prescribed", which refers to the form in which the notice to quit must be issued in writing in the future, means prescribed by regulations made by the Secretary of State by statutory instrument. I hope that, in examining the way in which a notice to quit shall be prescribed by regulations in the future, we shall be able to consider going along the road which my hon. Friend has suggested.
I do not say this categorically. I want to think about it. My hon. Friend has raised a most important point. We all know of many tenants who have acted upon notices to quit when they had no need to and, as a consequence, have lost their homes. If there is any way in which we can dissuade tenants from moving out when there is no need for them to do so until the full legal process has been followed, the whole House will wish to take action to meet that objective.

Mr. Tyler: I wish to make three references to the schedules. The first of them is in page 216. Unfortunately, there is no number. Perhaps I might say in passing, to rebut the suggestion of the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Cunningham) that the state of the Amendment Paper is somehow the fault of the Officers of the House, that the Officers of the House could not possibly have put the amendments into decent form between the end of the Bill's


stages in the other place at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. when we were asked to consider them—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I hesitate to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but I think that he is outside the group of amendments that we are considering. The hon. Gentleman is dealing with Amendment No. 117 in page 216. At the moment, we are going only as far as Amendment No. 112, in page 214.

Mr. Tyler: This is headed "After Schedule 3". I take it that it comes between Schedules 3 and 4, which is one schedule to which the Minister referred just now.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The Minister asked that Amendments Nos. 81 to 112 be considered. That is the group which we are considering at the moment. The hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. Tyler) will have his chance very shortly.

Mr. Graham Page: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The pages in my Amendment Paper bear four numbers on each. The page which I have open bears the number "93", which is stamped with a machine. Then there is the number "216" in ink in the right-hand corner. Below that, there is the number "57" which is obviously continental, since the "7" is crossed. Then below that, there is the number "117". This is the page to which the hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. Tyler) is referring, and I think that it is within the group which we are considering.

Mr. Tyler: I am tempted to sit beside the right hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Page). He seems to have two more numbers on every page than I do. However, I think this is within the group that we are considering.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am abiding by what the Minister said. I do not want to lean too heavily on him. Perhaps he will clarify the position.

Mr. Freeson: That is very kind of you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I assure you that, in view of the state that I am in over this Bill, if you lean heavily on me I may disappear through the floor.
So far as I am aware, the hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. Tyler) is in order

in raising this matter, although I, too, am in difficulty with the numbering of the pages.

Mr. Tyler: I rise with some trepidation. The question which I wish to raise on this page is that the final words of the new Schedule disappear off the bottom of it. There are three or four lines of which I cannot have knowledge. Perhaps the Minister will indicate what I am missing.
The other two matters I wish to raise are, perhaps, more serious. In page 219 there are two new clauses. I do not understand where they fall in the Bill. They follow page 118, which says simply, "Leave out Schedule 4", but they do not seem to follow page 217.
The other matter arises in page 231, and it is of some substance the main heading is "After Schedule 8". Crossed out, I can just make out the words "By the Lord Garnsworthy and the Lord Hughes". The amendment is to insert a new schedule which is headed, "Rehabilitation Orders".
This is an important new principle. It is being introduced into this House for the first time. I believe that there were sparse references to the subject in Committee, but I am not sure whether an undertaking was given in Committee that such a schedule would be introduced, since I did not serve on the Committee.
As I understand it, rehabilitation orders are a new concept in housing law. I hope that the Minister will satisfy us that these new ideas fit into the overall strategy for rehabilitation. I shall be grateful for some indication of the policy behind this new schedule on rehabilitation orders.

Mr. Freeson: I have given some thought to the new situation which will emerge as a result of the introduction of a housing action area type of approach to deal with properties which until now have always been dealt with by slum clearance orders or by making good. Probably under past legislation as many slums each year were made good as were cleared.
For that reason, we should not say that in practice it is new, although until now we have not spoken in the terms of the schedule. As I say, over a number of


years in the past as many slums were made good as were demolished.
The thinking behind this is that, with the idea of housing action area treatment for small pockets of property which in the past would have been conventionally treated purely for slum clearance, we are now deciding to treat by rehabilitation—full or partial.
There is a case for saying that, just as in the past there were powers to insist upon a property being closed as a slum, in future there should be powers to insist that where it is not to be demolished or closed it should be made good. We are moving into a position in which, instead of having slum clearance only or slum demolition only we shall have flexible powers for a greater variety of techniques for treating bad properties. If we are to have long-stop powers to compel certain action, we must have the right to insist that rehabilitation is undertaken of what would otherwise be property that in the past would have been demolished. Broadly speaking, that is the concept behind this fresh idea.

Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: Is not this responding very generously to our new clause, in respect of which the Minister gave an undertaking to try to put something in the Bill?

Mr. Freeson: I do not want to pursue that. I think that the hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Finsberg) is raising something that was akin to this measure but not identical. We were already thinking about introducing a measure to enable a local authority, which before the introduction of the Bill had embarked upon a slum clearance CPO, to backpedal out. With the introduction of the Bill an authority could adopt an alternative approach. That is something rather different from this particular point, but there is a kinship.

Mr. Graham Page: Does this mean that there can be an order on the owners to rehabilitate property, or provision for the local authority to go in and carry out the rehabilitation, or both?

Mr. Freeson: The answer is both. As the right hon. Gentlemen will be aware, even with the introduction of this new concept there are the default powers that local authorities possess. Both powers

will be available to local authorities in this new situation.

Question put and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords Amendments agreed to.

Schedule 9

OPTION MORTGAGES: AMENDMENT OF PART II OF HOUSING SUBSIDIES ACT 1967

Lords Amendment: No. 127, in page 124, line 22, at end insert—
(" (1A) In paragraph (c) of subsection (3) of that section (declaration by borrower as to use of land, etc.)—
(a) for the words "and the land" there shall be substituted the words "that the amount of the loan will not exceed the appropriate limit determined under section 24A of this Act and that, before the expiry of the period of 12 months beginning on the date referred to in paragraph (b) of this subsection, the land"; and
(b) for the words from "being the borrower" to "one of them)", in the second place where those words occur, there shall be substituted the words "or persons in such circumstances that the residence condition in section 24B of this Act is fulfilled";
and at the end of that paragraph there shall be added the words "and
(d) in a case where the specified person or persons named in a declaration under paragraph (c) above is, are or include the borrower all or any of the joint borrowers, that if the borrower or, in the case of joint borrowers, any of them is married and is not treated for income tax purposes as living apart from his spouse, the borrower or, as the case may be, each of those joint borrowers and (in either case) his spouse have signed and delivered to the lender a declaration either that there is no existing loan—
(i) the whole or any part of the interest on which is payable (whether alone of jointly with any other perscn) by the spouse; and
(ii) in respect of which an option notice for the time being has effect or in respect of which a claim for relief has been or is to be made under section 75 of the Finance Act 1972 (relief for payment of interest), and
(iii) which relates to, or was made with a view to the repayment of a previous loan which related to, land used wholly or mainly for the purposes of a dwelling (not being the dwelling to which the declaration under paragraph (c) above relates) which is that spouse's only or main residence or a caravan so used, or that such a loan does exist but the spouse intends that, within the period of 12 months


beginning on the date referred to in paragraph (b) above, the dwelling referred to in sub-paragraph (iii) above will cease to be the spouse's only or main residence.")

Mr. Freeson: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this we are to take Lords Amendments Nos. 128 to 144.

Mr. George Cunningham: With great respect, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I suggest that when the Question is being put every effort should be made to see whether a Member wishes to speak—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I apologise if I missed the hon. Gentleman. It was not intentional. I was concentrating on the difficulty of getting the procedure right.

Mr. Cunningham: I understand that, but this sort of thing often happens to Members in the House. [Interruption.] This is the British House of Commons, not a ward Labour Party—or something like that. The way that consideration of the Bill is being conducted is scandalous for a national legislature. One almost has to use force in order to get attention or get in on the discussion.
I wish to draw attention to Amendment No. 140, which relates to compulsory purchase orders. As I understand it this amendment extends the period during which a possession order may be suspended while a compulsory purchase order is being considered. I am grateful to the Government for responding to the amendment which I moved in Standing Committee, but I would like to be able to understand the extent to which they have gone beyond what I suggested in Standing Committee. Am I right in thinking that if a compulsory purchase order is quashed by a court or refused by a Minister, the suspension of the possession order immediately lapses?
11.15 p.m.
If the Minister approves the compulsory purchase order—this is the point on which I am uncertain—the suspension is

to continue for three years. This would mean that if a local authority acquired a property by compulsory purchase, for three years the tenants of the local authority would be secure. If I have that right, I think that they would be the only tenants of a local authority who would have security of tenure. Since this is an odd situation, I want to be certain that I have it right. I can see reasons for doing it, but I am not sure that my understanding is correct.
Second, is the period of three years subject to the wishes of the court? Let us suppose that the court, while the CPO was being considered, gave a possession order to the previous private landlord and suspended it and then the compulsory purchase order was confirmed. Would the suspension then continue for three years, whether the court wanted it to or not, or would the court somehow have a right to terminate the suspension during that period?

Mr. Freeson: My hon. Friend asked, first, whether the amendment would mean that, in addition to the security which a tenant would have between the time that a compulsory purchase order was applied for and the time that it was confirmed, he would have three years thereafter. The answer is "Yes". The answer to his second point is that the court would have the discretion that it would have if the order for possession were being sought for the first time.
My hon. Friend referred to the case in which a possession order has been sought but not executed and a local authority has applied for and received a compulsory purchase order and has had it approved by the Secretary of State. The position of the court in such a circumstance is discretionary. Similarly, in the situation that I have described, there would be the same discretion as if the order for possession had been applied for for the first time prior to the CPO being applied for.

Question put and agreed to.

Remaining Lords amendments agreed to.

Orders of the Day — HOUSING (SCOTLAND) BILL

Lords amendments considered.

Clause 5

AMOUNT OF IMPROVEMENT GRANT

Lords Amendment: No. 1, in page 5, line 10, leave out "works of repair and replacement" and insert "improvement works".

11.18 p.m.

The Minister of State, Scottish office (Mr. Bruce Millan): I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
This amendment and the other amendment to the clause are purely drafting amendments.

Mr. Teddy Taylor: First, I should like to congratulate the Minister on showing once again how efficient Scotland is in producing an excellent Bill, with no printing mistakes, and a clear and precise list of amendments.
I have one short question on the amendment. This refers to
works of repair and replacement
being replaced by the words "improvement works." The one question that I have is about a problem which has arisen in Glasgow and certain other areas in defining what is a bath. In other words, is the replacement of a bath a work of improvement. The problem specifically arises from old iron baths which do not have normal plugs but large metal plungers. In some of the baths the plungers are breaking down and cannot be replaced.
I have three specific examples, details of which I could send to the Minister, of cases in which baths are unusable because plungers cannot be obtained anywhere in the United Kingdom, or even in the EEC countries or Japan. This means that a number of people are unable to use these baths because replacements cannot be found. I wonder whether this amendment will mean that these baths which previously qualified for a grant, will no longer qualify for a grant. If that is not the case and if this is purely a drafting amendment, will the Minister be kind enough to look into the specific problem and write to me and those interested in the matter?

Mr. Millan: The hon. Gentleman raises a quite ingenious point, but I do not think that it arises from the amendment, which is specifically a drafting amendment because the drafting is at present defective. The words we are dealing with, to which the 50 per cent. relates, ought to refer to the total expenditure, which is the total approved expense of executing the improvement rather than simply the expense of the repair and replacement part of this.
Whether the replacement of baths in the circumstances the hon. Gentleman mentions should be treated as a repair and replacement or as an improvement is probably in the first instance for the local authority to decide. The important thing is that in the way in which the Bill is drafted the matter can be covered, because we now have "repairs and replacements" as well as "improvements" covered. Therefore, I should have thought that the Bill certainly covers the possibility.
How the Bill would operate in a particular instance might be for the local authority to decide in the first instance. However, I shall look into this point and write to the hon. Gentleman about it. I hope that he will find that an agreeable way of dealing with the matter.

Question put and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords amendments agreed to.

Clause 9

CONDITIONS TO BE OBSERVED WITH RESPECT TO HOUSES IN RESPECT OF WHICH AN IMPROVEMENT GRANT HAS BEEN MADE, AND REGISTRATION THEREOF

Lords Amendment: No. 3, in page 9, line 12, leave out "housing association" and insert "registered housing association".

Mr. Millan: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Oscar Murton): With this we are to take Lords Amendments Nos. 4 and 25.

Question put and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords amendments agreed. to.

Clause 16

DECLARATION OF HOUSING ACTION AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT

Lords Amendment: No. 5, in page 15, line 29, leave out from "area" to the end of line 31.

Mr. Millan: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
It may be convenient for the House if we take at the same time Lords Amendments Nos. 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10.
These are all drafting amendments. Unless hon. Members wish to raise any points on them it may be possible for them all to be put together.

Mr. David Steel: Clauses 16 and 17 deal with the question of housing action areas. On Report a number of hon. Members, including myself, stressed the importance of the way in which local authorities set about creating housing action areas and the information they gave to the public. The Minister agreed with the points which were made and undertook that guidance would be given to local authorities by the Scottish Office.
In my surgery at the weekend I was visited by a young couple about to be married on Thursday. They brought with them a letter from a town clerk who stated—even before the Bill is passed—that the town council would designate a certain area in which they lived as a housing action area. Two weeks ago they received £1,200 by way of grant for bringing the house up to a tolerable standard. They were about to move into it when suddenly they received the town clerk's letter.
That underlines the need for clear guidance to be given by the Scottish Office on how local authorities should give information to those affected by housing action areas. The whole House accepted the assurance which the Minister gave on Report. I suspect that I am somewhat wide of the amendment. The Minister should take the opportunity of reasserting that some guidance will be given to local authorities on how they should convey information so as not to cause distress to those affected.

Mr. Millan: The hon. Gentleman is not simply wide of the amendment; he is talking about something entirely different. These are drafting amendments to take out superfluous words. I have already given assurances on a number of occasions. Any notices which have been sent out could not have been sent out under the Bill. When we issue guidance to authorities we shall take into account the need for clear notice to be given to those affected in housing action areas.

Question put and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords amendments agreed to.

Clause 36

OBLIGATIONS OF LOCAL AUTHORITIES IN RELATION TO REHOUSING IN HOUS ING ACTION AREAS

Lords Amendment: No. 11, in page 31, line 9, leave out "a local" and insert:
and where a local authority are under a duty by virtue of section 36 of the Land Compensation (Scotland) Act 1973 to rehouse him, the".

Mr. Millan: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
This is basically a drafting amendment. I will explain it because on the face of it it will not be absolutely clear to the House.
Clause 36 was a new Clause put into the Bill on Report following a debate which, as the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Taylor) will remember, took place in Committee. The clause gives additional protection to persons displaced as a result of the housing action area procedure, that when they are rehoused by a local authority some attention will be paid to the wishes of the person concerned, particularly about the locality in which he is being rehoused.
The way in which the clause is drafted would place an absolute obligation on the local authority to rehouse anyone displaced in a housing action area. In fact, the normal obligation of a local authority is to provide rehousing only when in the normal course rehousing is not already made available either by the landlord or in some other way.
This is provided for in previous legislation. It is the well-established law and practice on the matter, but most of us know that in many of these situations it becomes an obligation on the local authority. The purpose of the amendment is to put this clause in the form in which it ought to have appeared in the first place to say that when the local authority is under an obligation to rehouse it must have regard to the wishes of the person concerned as to the locality. In that sense, it is merely a drafting amendment.

Mr. Teddy Taylor: I am grateful to the Minister for introducing the amendment. We are proud of this clause, because it was brought into the Bill as a result of representations by my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick and East Lothian (Mr. Ancram) in Committee. We were worried when we saw the amendment because it appeared to be a weakening of the housing obligation, but I am grateful for the Minister's assurance that that is not the case.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 37

APPLICATION TO SHERIFF FOR POSSESSION WHERE HOUSE IS IDENTIFIED IN ACCORDANCE WITH SECTION 20(1) AS EAD WITH SECTION 18(4)(a)

Lords Amendment: No. 12, in page 31, line 32, leave out "two" and insert "four"

11.30 p.m.

Mr. Millan: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
I think that it might be convenient if with this we take Lords Amendments Nos. 13 and 14.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: So be it.

Mr. Millan: These amendments were inserted by the Government in the other place to improve the period of notice given to tenants under this Part of the Bill when they have to vacate their houses either permanently or temporarily. We have increased the period of notice from two to four weeks as it was, to four to six weeks.
This is an improvement in tenants' rights. The point was not raised before but, bearing in mind our earlier discussion, I am sure that these improvements from the tenant's point of view will be acceptable to the House.

Question put and agreed to

Mr. Teddy Taylor: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Following informal discussions, may I ask whether the Minister would agree to the remainder of the Lords amendments being taken en bloc?

Mr. Millan: I agree.

Subsequent Lords amendments agreed to [some with Special Entries].

Orders of the Day — STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS

Mr. Deputy Speaker: If there is no objection, I shall put a single Question on the remaining motions.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 73A (Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments):

AGRICULTURE

That the Agricultural Lime Scheme (Extension of Period) Order 1974, a draft of which was laid before this House on 2nd July, be approved.—[Mr. Walter Harrison.]

HORTICULTURE

That the Hop Gardens (Replanting and Restructuring) Scheme 1974, a copy of which was laid before this House on 2nd July, be approved.—[Mr. Walter Harrison.]

COAL INDUSTRY

That the Coal Industry (Borrowing Powers) Order 1974, a draft of which was laid before this House on 11th July, be approved.—[Mr. Walter Harrison.]

LEGAL AID AND ADVICE

That the Legal Advice and Assistance (Financial Conditions) Regulations 1974, a copy of which was laid before this House on 15th July, be approved.—[Mr. Walter Harrison.]

LEGAL AID AND ADVICE

That the Legal Aid (Financial Conditions) Regulations 1974, a copy of which was laid before this House on 15th July, be approved.—[Mr. Walter Harrison.]

LEGAL AID AND ADVICE (SCOTLAND)

That the Legal Advice and Assistance (Scotland) (Financial Conditions) Regulations 1974, a copy of which was laid before this House on 16th July, be approved.—[Mr. Walter Harrison.]

LEGAL AID AND ADVICE (SCOTLAND)

That the Legal Aid (Scotland) (Financial Conditions) Regulations 1974, a copy of which was laid before this House on 16th July, be approved.—[Mr. Walter Harrison.]

Question agreed to.

SELECT COMMITTEES (REPORTS DURING ADJOURNMENTS)

Ordered,
That, whenever the House stands adjourned for more than two days, any select Committee shall have power to deliver Minutes of Evidence taken before them or before any Subcommittee appointed by them, or Minutes of their Proceedings, or any paper containing their observations, conclusions or recommendations, to the Clerk of the House; and the delivery of such Minutes or papers to the Clerk shall be deemed to be the reporting of them to the House; and the Committee shall have power to direct the printing of such Minutes or papers, and such printing shall be deemed to be by order of the House.—[Mr. Walter Harrison.]

ADJOURNMENT

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Pavitt.]

Orders of the Day — SEAFORTH GRAIN TERMINAL

11.34 p.m.

Mrs. Lynda Chalker: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for allowing this Adjournment debate on a very important subject. First, even at this late hour I remind the House that the people of Merseyside and, indeed, people throughout the country, are most concerned to see the Port of Liverpool fully at work.
Secondly, we have suffered difficulties over a long period for a variety of reasons, but particularly with the grain terminal, and it seemed to me high time—finding that there were no references to this matter in the documents in this House—that it should be discussed here.
Thirdly, I am concerned that the work of the Port of Liverpool should be encouraged, that the existing port users continue and expand trading through the port, and that the port companies use the port for the development work for which it has been designed.
At the outset, let me say that my sole intention is to see more jobs, more prosperity and greater happiness for the people of Merseyside through the full working of this port. Whatever the history of the port, the present non-use of the Seaforth grain terminal is a waste of good money and good men, discouraging incentive and wasting a lot of good new business coming to this country from abroad. Other industries are now being located far from the North-West, for this reason.
It was back in January 1972 that discussions on the manning of the Seaforth grain terminal began. This was prior to the completion of the terminal. They began with the earnest hope that the discussions on manning and wages in the terminal would be agreed by the date that the terminal could commence working. Already in 1971 there was a White Paper from the previous Conservative Government which reviewed the progress made since the Rochdale Report in 1962. It said:
The Government expects the ports to put themselves in a position where they can provide the services essential to the country's economic prosperity both efficiently and profitably.
That is what the industry, the port authority and the dockers want to see.


But it also sums up why two years of non-operation of the terminal—built at a cost to this nation of £12½ million—is a shocking waste, a great sadness and a blight on the North-West.
The obvious wastage in this terminal is a discouragement not just to present-day users but to future millers and animal feeding manufacturers. Wherever the fault lies, I am not in a position to apportion blame, nor am I concerned to do so, because it is one of those famous cases in which people all round are a little to blame and it is time we came together to resolve this matter. That is my reason for raising it in the House.
When I first raised the question in Parliament last May I was told by the Minister that conciliation officers would be available as soon as they were needed. That was on 24th May last. The officers of the Department of Employment were ready to go in and help if requested to do so. I believed then that it would be necessary, from representations made to me from all parts of industry and, indeed, from people working in the port and people who hoped to work within the grain terminal.
It is therefore a great help to know that the conciliation team began its work about 10 days ago. I know that the team has a very difficult task ahead of it, and one in respect of which we can only hope that common sense will prevail, because there is a great deal more at stake than just the sheer working of the terminal.
The fact that conciliation has begun, however, does not obviate the need for a debate tonight; it strengthens my earnest request to Her Majesty's Minister to make sure that we succeed, as never before, to eliminate the ills of the past two years, to bring the terminal on line, and to bring jobs and greater prosperity to Merseyside.
It is necessary to look briefly at the efforts made to agree terms of working, so that at no stage in the future do we get ourselves into this precarious situation.
There have been three major issues in this dispute between the Transport and General Workers Union—through its Liverpool Grain Committee—and the port employers. The first concerned the union requirement that all staff workers

should be registered dock workers, under the National Dock Labour Scheme. This sophisticated new terminal is computerised. There are buttons to be pushed by computer operators. It requires clerical staff.
At first, the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company could not see the need for registered dock workers to do this work. After negotiations with the National Joint Council it was agreed that in this case and this case alone—not setting any precedents for any other part of the port. or any other port—the clerical workers on the computer side of the grain terminal should be registered dockworkers I could never see myself as a dock worker in the normal sense of the word, but I imagine that even I could push the buttons on that computer. I hope that people are soon doing that job so that we secure the productivity that is so desperately needed.
After references to the negotiating body of the National Joint Council there was a recommendation of special negotiations on wages, manning and hours. But after nine joint meetings there was no further agreement. The Mersey Docks and Harbour Company assessed that the operation of the terminal required two 7-hour shifts of 32 men per shift to achieve maximum profitability. It believed that was the correct figure in the interests of the port if it was to push up throughput and bring additional benefit to the Merseyside docks. The union claimed at that time that there should be three shifts on a much reduced working day, each manned by 120 men, requiring 360 men in total. I cannot understand that, and even Lew Lloyd could not explain it to me when I asked.
The outcome of the work by the National Joint Council assessors was to set a total of 116 men to cover two 7-hour shifts with additional men on duty for cleaning and store keeping. The management accepted that recommendation. The union at that stage could not because it felt a drastic loss of jobs was involved. It suggested that 160 men were needed on a 25–30 hour week, with rotational manning through the terminal. Again there was an impasse and so the story has gone on. The union first rejected average pay of £61 and since then has maintained that £67 is not acceptable for a 35-hour


week. Compare that, however, with the average wage of £55 a week for the other dock workers in the port, and with £45 a week for the mill workers who will benefit from the terminal.
The answer to this problem seems to lie in a lack of confidence among dockers in the future. No matter which Government are in power there seems to be among many men the feeling that things can never work out. I want to see that attitude go.
Apart from the investment and the mounting bills incurred in the terminal, the country is spending money on food subsidies for bread. It is subsidising the millers, yet the millers cannot make a profit because the terminal is not working. When it began its building in the 1960s the millers were planning for a rundown of the old ways of working. They were planning to bring to the terminal ships of up to 75,000 tons carrying animal feedstuffs and grain ships up up to 34,000 tons with a cargo for milling. These ships cannot come into the South Docks and Birkenhead Docks. The ships have to go to Gladstone Dock to be unloaded into barges. The lightened vessels can then use the South Dock and Birkenhead. There are added problems in the South Dock, because the docks are silting up, which means continual dredging manoeuvres. Yet all this time the perfectly good Seaforth grain terminal stands idle at a cost not just of its building but of its future and of the job prospects for the men.
The other tragedy of the situation is that goods are now going into Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Tilbury, and are being moved from the large tonnage ships on to the small ones so that they come up to Liverpool as heavy loads on the road network, using petrol and diesel fuel that we can ill afford, because we cannot use a deep berth terminal built for the purpose. It is an utter waste that we should be going on in this way.
It may not be that the dockers, millers and industry suffer in 1974, but their sons leaving school in five and ten years' time will suffer from the lack of conciliation. Already, major millers say that they cannot operate as profitably in this country as they can in other countries, because they have to bring in small loads. Kelloggs and Allied Mills, which have

built mills alongside the Seaforth grain terminal, have those mills lying idle—further investment wasted over the past months.
But it is not just the dockers who suffer directly. It is also the millers and bakers, animal feedstuff producers and the farmers—and that means every one of us, right down to the consumer in the end in terms of prices. Whereas Hull, Avonmouth and Tilbury can adequately supply their surrounding areas, Liverpool is unable to do so and cannot feed Belfast and Scotland with the grain and animal feedstuffs required for economic operation, because it cannot handle the quantity at present. Liverpool is importing large tonnages from Tilbury because it cannot, with its present docking arrangements, take in the quantity it requires.
During recent months I have spoken with trade unionists, management, consumers, port authorities, river pilots and industrialists to try to discover why the situation has had to go on and on and on. It seems to me that there has been intransigence on both sides. The arguments continue for a 25-hour or 30-hour week, but it would not be economic to run the grain terminal on those hours. Now the Liverpool Grain Committee, although agreed on £67 for a 35-hour week, still insists on a bigger labour force than the National Joint Council recommended. It is insisting on 148, whereas the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company had agreed to 116–52 more than were considered economic when the negotiations started.
The conciliation machinery is now being used. It is a tragedy that it was not seen that the National Joint Council machinery had been exhausted before this date. If one is trying to get something moving in industry, two years sitting around a table is an awful long time to discuss it with the same group of people going over the same issues.
Industry, whether publicly or privately owned, has a duty to serve the public, to produce goods at the lowest economic price while maintaining technological progress. But none of that will happen in the animal feeding stuffs industry and milling in the North-West until that Seaforth grain terminal is working properly.
I think I understand very well the deep-seated fear of technological change


that many of the dockers have. They are terrified not only of the loss of their jobs, because with modern technology not so many men are needed, but of what will happen in the future. Here I feel that the dockers could have been taken a good deal more into the minds and planning of the companies in the area. That is something that I hope will come.
This brings to mind the famous Churchillian saying that jaw-jaw is better than war-war. I change it to say that this seems to me to be a case of jaw-jawing because otherwise we shall gnaw-gnaw away at the heart of something that is vital to Merseyside and everyone in the area.
The dockers talk of needing wage rises in the future. I hope that they, like the rest of us, know that there is not a bottomless pit, and that unless an employer can run a viable business they cannot have higher wages. The Mersey Docks and Harbour company lost £2½ million in 1973 and £1·8 million in 1972, and has received grants from the Government of £2 million for cargo handling. But the dockers are only going to benefit when they see full working.
I have a letter from the Port of Liverpool's managing director, who says:
We remain prepared to look at any reasonable proposals which will lead to the opening of the terminal or any arrangement which is mutually acceptable which will lead to this end.
That remains so. Mr. Lew Lloyd, the leader of the shop stewards, told me on the telephone yesterday, "But they will not talk to us because they will not go over new ground."
I think the time has come when they cannot go over new ground. This is why conciliation has at long last come. There are those who argue that there is no desire amongst the dockers for a settlement. I am certain that amongst the vast majority of the men of Merseyside there is a definite desire to settle this matter, to get the grain terminal works, to benefit from it, and to increase the profitability of the animal feeding stuff manufacturers so that they can expand and provide more, not less, work.
The views are common to all of us. I find that many of these men say, "We get told things". They want to participate in the decision which is being made

about their future. Why can they not ballot on the terms negotiated by their leadership, whom they may elect or appoint or however they do it—no one has been able to explain to me quite how the committee came into being or was elected. Why should not the management allow mid-week meetings, when the men could hear all sides of the story? Sunday morning meetings, when only 500 out of 7,500 dockers are present, are not the way to communicate fully with the men.
Perhaps the conciliation team, as well as persuading the dockers that the offer now being made to them is reasonable, could get the management to agree that more time needs to be spent on building up good relations and taking away the fears, and that the two sides need to come a great deal closer together. When Seaforth is successful, further negotiations on the future can succeed. Until the grain terminal proceeds successfully, the dockers have no assurance of the good will and understanding that there can be in this industry.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. George Thomas): Order. I thought that the hon. Lady had agreed that the right hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Page) should have time to speak. Three-quarters of the adjournment debate has now gone.

Mrs. Chalker: I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am drawing to a close. I know from discussions I have had that the men are willing to work, and want to work. My plea to the Government is that they should bring as much pressure as possible to bear, in the nicest possible way, upon the conciliation officers to bring the men together. We are all aware of the responsibility to bring men and management together to work, and it is on the Government that that responsibility must now lie.

11.55 p.m.

Mr. Graham Page: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Mrs. Chalker) on raising this important issue in the House tonight and upon her cogent argument. I have to declare an interest, in that the terminal is in my constituency. It is part of the great modern Seaforth Dock complex, which was so recently built properly to cope with this sort of import. I have to declare another interest in that I was


closely connected with the civil engineering firm which built it.
The House will not be surprised if I say with some pride that this is the most efficient building and dock of its type in the world. It has been internationally acclaimed for its clever design. It is purpose-built. All of this makes the fact that it has been idle for two years a tragedy. How can the country prosper when we let our resources rot like this?
We can tackle our present problems only by increased efficiency and productivity. Here is a building and equipment which can enormously increase the efficient handling of grain as compared with the conventional system of grain handling. As with any improvement of this sort there will be fewer people employed. The two extremes for the number of men to be employed, as stated on the one hand by the unions and as stated by the dock company on the other, have gradually got closer while negotiations have continued. Any losses will be compensated by the associated jobs which will result from increased productivity.
It is for the unions and management to find the solution. I do not believe that this is impossible. I do not believe—this is the crux of the matter—that the two parties realise the extent to which, by their failure to agree, they are damaging the industrial future of Merseyside and holding themselves and this country up to ridicule in the many countries whose ships and people trade through the Port of Liverpool. I hope that, thanks to my hon. Friend's raising this vitally important matter, the message will go out from the House tonight, to management and unions, For God's sake, stop these squabbles, get the matter settled and get down to the job that can be done in these efficient buildings and this efficient dock".

11.57 p.m.

The Minister of State, Department of Employment (Mr. Albert Booth): I welcome the opportunity of this debate to set out the background to the breakdown of negotiations for the working of the Sea-forth grain terminal and to explain the rôle of my Department and the steps we are currently taking to obtain a solution to the outstanding problems. I will follow the example of the hon. Member for Wallasey (Mrs. Chalker) in not seeking

to apportion blame. I have the added reason that the proper rôle of my Department is conciliation, and this would be hindered if we were seen to take sides when we seek to bring about an agreement between the two sides.
The Seaforth grain terminal is part of the Royal Seaforth Dock complex which covers 500 acres of land reclaimed from the Mersey. Other facilities at the dock include terminals for containers, for meat and for timber. The project has been financed entirely by Government loans and grant. The cost at completion is likely to be about £45 million.
The grain terminal was the last of the terminals to be built and was ready for partial use in July 1972. It was fully completed by the end of that year. The terminal provides the opportunity for Liverpool to recapture its pre-war position as one of Europe's leading grain ports. Modern machinery and a silo holding 100,000 tonnes means that the very biggest bulk grain carriers will be able to discharge and that a very fast turnaround can be achieved. The existing grain docks at Merseyside can handle only smaller vessels. Inadequate facilities means that the rate of discharge is slow.
Negotiations on arrangements for working the terminal have so far been unsuccessful. The port's Grain Committee, which is the negotiating body for all industrial relations matters connected with the grain trade affecting registered dock workers, began discussions in July 1972. It would be an under-statement to say that this was not an ideal time to contemplate the introduction of new machinery which apparently reduced employment opportunities in the port. The three-week national docks stoppage in that month was caused partly by the stupidities of the Industrial Relations Act but also, as became apparent once the Official Solicitor had appeared, by the real concern felt by dockers at the surplus labour situation which then existed.
Although the previous administration accepted one of the recommendations of the Joint Special Committee on the Port Industry and introduced a special severance scheme under which over 8,000 registered dock workers left the industry, rank-and-file fears about future job prospects still remained. I do not find this surprising in an industry whose labour force


has declined by almost a half in the past seven years.
Negotiations initially foundered on the question whether all workers at the terminal should be registered under the Dock Workers Employment Scheme. The issues were complicated and arose primarily because of the port's local definition of "dock work" for the purposes of the scheme. I do not propose to dwell on the various attempts to reach agreement on the matter.
Problems such as these are a good example of the reason why my right hon. Friend announced to the House on 15th July that he proposed to start consultations on possible changes to the statutory definitions of "dock work" and "dock worker". If the previous administration had not sought to erect and preserve the unnecessary and harmful legal apparatus of the Industrial Relations Act, but had turned its energies to tackling problems of real concern to particular industries, today's debate might not have been necessary.
It was therefore not until this February that the Grain Committee started serious negotiations on the crucial questions of manning, pay and hours of work at the terminal.
After visits to the grain terminal by two assessors accompanied by local full-time union officials and the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company grain terminal management, the NJC ruled that a total of 116 men should be employed at the terminal in two shifts of seven hours, and that 51 men should be employed on each shift, plus 14 men on permanent day duty for cleaning and storekeeping. The question of rates of pay was not considered, as the NJC felt that there had been insufficient negotiation at local level.
At the present point of time, the differences between the two sides are that the employers are offering employment for 116 men on 35 hours per week, and the union is claiming 148 men on 30 hours per week. Whilst there is also a difference between the two sides on whether the jobs should be rotated throughout the labour force, agreement seems possible on the question of rates of pay.
I should now like to turn to the rôle of my Department. As the House will be aware, the services of my Department's

Conciliation Service are always available at the request of one or both of the parties involved in an actual or threatened trade dispute, but it has been the practice, accepted by successive administrations, that when an issue is being dealt with under an industry's own procedural arrangements, intervention in the absence of a request should not normally take place. Such intervention could seriously weaken the procedural arrangements and prejudice settlement of future disputes. Since taking office, the Government have kept very closely in touch with developments on negotiations about the grain terminal, but no request for conciliation was received, and the prospect of a negotiated agreement ruled out any intervention.
However, as I have described, it unfortunately became clear at the end of June that further progress was unlikely to be made. I therefore arranged to ask the NJC whether it proposed to take any further steps to bring about a settlement and suggested conciliation. As the NJC reported to me that a settlement was not in prospect, my Department's conciliation service is at present exploring with the parties the question whether it can be of assistance in helping them to reach agreement on the outstanding issues.
I very much hope that this will lead swiftly to a conclusion of these long and difficult negotiations.
I do not want at this stage to discuss other initiatives which might be made—this could prejudice the present conciliation attempt—but I can assure the House that we shall do everything possible to ensure that reason and goodwill prevail so that the grain terminal can soon be opened and play its full part in bringing prosperity to the Port of Liverpool, to Merseyside and to the country as a whole.

Mr. Graham Page: The failure to man the grain terminal has nothing whatever to do with the Industrial Relations Act—

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock on Thursday evening, and the debate having continued for half an hour on Thursday Evening, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at four minutes past Twelve o'clock.